Applications open for EIT Food's EWA - Empowering Women in Agrifood

The ground-breaking EIT Food programme, EWA, includes support, training and personalized mentoring for six months, as well as prizes up to EUR 10 000.

Registration is open from today until 15 June 2020 in Spain, Portugal, the Czech Republic, Romania and Turkey.

Women with passion, ideas and answers to the challenges that the agrifood sector has to face for the society of the 21st century. That is what we are looking for, which is why today we have opened the programme Empowering Women in Agrifood (EWA), to be implemented in five countries.

We are well aware of the obstacles that women have to overcome in this environment and seek to revert the current statistics that show the difficulties they have when it comes to leading agrifood businesses: only 28% of the women in the sector are managers or have top-level responsibilities in agricultural and livestock farms in the European Union. In addition, there is another reason: we have considered that, 'as a result of the crisis caused by COVID-19, it is necessary to reinforce the support programmes for this group of women', explained Begoña Pérez-Villareal, EIT Food Director in the South of Europe.

EWA aims to reinforce female leadership and wants to support women with ideas or start-ups in initial phases in the agrifood sector. It targets especially at rural areas with difficult access to other business incubation programmes or training. EWA will be implemented in Spain, Portugal, the Czech Republic, Romania and Turkey.

The programme, which will be developed from July to December and will be entirely free, includes tailor-made online and face-to-face training (the final details will depend on the evolution of the COVID-19 health crisis). In addition, mentoring will be offered by female experts in business and agrifood as well as by other successful entrepreneurs. It will include both women that have an idea to materialize, and those who have already created a startup and are taking their first steps. The workshops, as well as the different actions, are driven by professional women.

The EWA programme also incorporates a remarkable financing section which will give access to prizes up to EUR 10 000 at the end of the process and will also facilitate the link to other EIT Food programmes with access to finance.

The third aspect of the programme is the creation of a community through events and a network with over 100 female entrepreneurs and mentors in the sector, as well as access to contacts from diverse fields such as investment, technology, corporate or other contacts from the net of the European consortium. 

Register here: Česká republika | España | Portugal | România | Türkiye