This chapter presents inspiring policy practices from 28 EU member states together with a set of figures that benchmark key indicators for entrepreneurship and self-employment in under-represented and disadvantaged groups against the European Union averages.

Description: The Business Start-up Programme (UGP – Unternehmensgründungsprogramm) of the Austrian Public Employment Service (AMS – Arbeitsmarktservice) is an integrated support offer that provides business advice and consulting from external management consultants, tailored training, and a start-up allowance (for living expenses) during the period of setting-up a business. The target client group is unemployed people who have a business idea as well as relevant professional abilities.

Description: Stebo (www.stebo.be/) is a non-profit organisation that develops and delivers projects, services and initiatives to address social and economic exclusion including access to the labour market, housing and education. This includes supporting entrepreneurs from disadvantaged groups, such as recent migrants, with information services, training, coaching and support with networking and project development.

Description: This scheme aims to support the creation of social capital through the creation and development of social enterprises that realise projects that improve management and business skills through motivational training and individual advisory services. The support is targeted at people with disabilities, persons who have served a prison sentence, single parents, members of minority ethnic groups, people living in institutions, persons suffering from addiction, and long-term unemployed people.

Description: The project “It’s time for women” supports unemployed women in re-entering the labour market through training for self-employment. It was implemented in counties affected by the war, where the unemployment levels of women remain higher than the Croatian average.

Description: The Grant Scheme for the Enhancement of Youth Entrepreneurship offers financial support in the form of grants coupled with start-up and small business management training to young people between the ages of 20 and 39 who seek to start and develop their own businesses. Its primary aim is to alleviate unemployment among graduates but it also supports women re-entering the job market (with an age limit of 55).

Description: “Build your own enterprise as a way to connect work with childcare” is a project that supports entrepreneurship for parents on or exiting parental leave. The aim of the project is to provide information on self-employment and business start-up to parents to support them in business creation. The project was implemented in the capital city of Prague between 1 June 2011 and 31 May 2013.

Description: This project in Bornholm aims to stimulate business creation to rejuvenate the regional economy to stop the outmigration of young people who leave seeking education and employment opportunities. The Business Centre Bornholm (BCB) provides training and advice for those seeking to set-up businesses.

Description: This microfinance scheme is targeted at self-employed women and female-owned micro-enterprises in rural areas of Estonia. The project aims to establish loan groups in 10 rural regions for women who are starting or developing businesses and provides mentoring and training support. It was established by ETNA, an Estonian non-profit association of rural women-entrepreneurs.

Description: The mission of the Women’s Enterprise Agency is to promote female entrepreneurship and support women entrepreneurs in developing their businesses and creating networks. The Agency provides diverse services for female-led start-ups including information provision and referrals, training, mentoring and advisory services. Established in 1996, the Agency currently operates an all-female staff of 5 in two offices (Helsinki and Tampere) and is one of the 32 enterprise agencies that form the Finnish Enterprise Agencies network (the other agencies have a specific regional, rather than a demographic focus).

Description: The Fonds de garantie à l’initiative des femmes (FGIF), part of the national Guarantee Funds scheme, encourages the creation, take-over and development of companies by women. The state provides a loan guarantee, through France Active Garantie to facilitate the granting of bank loans to women who wish to create or develop their business.

Description: The Students’ Institute for Technology and Applied ICT (SITI), founded in 1999, is a pioneer in the field of entrepreneurship education and in the promotion of innovation and technology skills among young students, mainly from secondary schools (aged 10-18). SITI’s primary aim is to support the personal and skill development of young people in technology-oriented fields, in order to develop opportunities for a career, particularly self-employment, in innovative sectors of the economy.

Description: The establishment of the Social Co-operatives of Limited Liability (KoiSPE) in 1999 under (Article 12), is a specific form of a co-operative organisation (i.e. social enterprise), which serves both economic and social purposes. It aims to improve the socio-economic re-integration and vocational re-insertion of persons with mental health problems, contributing both to their rehabilitation and to their economic self-sufficiency.

Description: The main goal of the MeXX Programme was to assist unemployed women in entering the labour market through self-employment and to support female entrepreneurs who were already established. More specifically, the programme targets women with small children or those on maternity leave, pregnant women, and women older than 40 years. The scheme provided a comprehensive support package consisting of training, personal and peer-based mentoring and consultancy services. These components were designed to boost self-confidence and to support the development of communication and business skills.

Description: National Women’s Enterprise Day is an annual event that started in 2008. It is organised by the 35 City and Country Enterprise Boards (CEBs) and co-financed by the European Social Fund, with support from the Department of Justice and Equality. The aim is to encourage female entrepreneurs and to support them in developing their networks and improving their skills.

Description: In 2011, the Tuscany regional government set-up an integrated strategy to improve the transition into the labour market for youth. This strategy, Giovanisì, aims to address both short-term challenges in response to the recent economic crisis and longer-term development and demographic challenges. The strategy has four priority targets: students; postgraduates and researchers; youth not in employment, education and training (i.e. NEETs); and potential entrepreneurs. Giovanisì’s policies promoting entrepreneurship are organised as a programme called Starting a Business.

Description: The scheme Business incubators in the Latvian regions supports the establishment of business incubators in disadvantaged and rural regions to support entrepreneurs in setting-up and developing their business. The aim of the policy is to stimulate economic development of the Latvian regions outside of Riga. These incubators provide discounted business development services and facilities to businesses in the early stages of development.

Description: The project First business year baskets was implemented in Lithuania from May 2011 to July 2013 to support people under the age of 29 in business creation. It offered a menu of business development services and participants received an allotment of vouchers that could be used to “purchase” some of the available support services.

Description: The public-private initiative Jonk Entrepreneuren Luxembourg (Young entrepreneurs in Luxembourg) aims to increase students’ interest in entrepreneurship. It aims to promote entrepreneurship and self-employment as an alternative to paid employment for young people and promote innovative behaviour among young people through a wide range of activities including group projects and “mini companies”.

Description: The Hands-on project was designed to develop entrepreneurship skills among students with special needs attending Guardian Angel Secondary Education Resource Centre and Dun Manwel Attard Young Adult Education Resource Centre in Malta. The project provides training for educators at the two schools and supports them in delivering the training programme to students.

Description: The programme IkStartSmart (“I Start Smart”) is an integrated support programme for people in the province of Gelderland who wish to start a business or develop an existing business that is less than 5 years old.

Description: The government of Poland has a programme entitled Solidarity between Generations: Measures to Increase Labour Force Participation of People Aged 50+. This programme is planned for the years 2009-20 and aims to provide a variety of activities to improve the quality of life for mature people, organised by the public or publicly funded institutions, and including support for entrepreneurship.

Description: This project transferred, applied and disseminated a Community-Based Business Support (CBBS) model that was developed in the United Kingdom. It was developed and co-ordinated by Sociedade Portuguesa de Inovação (SPI) and ran between 2010 and 2012. The focus of the project was to support entrepreneurship activities by immigrant communities by improving the abilities of business advisers to address specific challenges faced by the immigrant communities and training new business advisers who come from immigrant communities.

Description: This 3-year project started in August 2010 and aims to promote entrepreneurial culture in rural areas by creating conditions for the development of profitable non-agricultural enterprises. This project covers the rural areas from the North-West Region and Centre Region of Romania and is implemented by two partner NGOs, Maramures Center for Development of SMEs and Harghita Center for Innovation and Business Incubation. Eligible participants are unemployed people who have worked in subsistence agriculture.

Description: REGIONFEMME is a project aimed at the support and training of women entrepreneurs in the western region of the Slovak Republic, near the Austrian border. The project operated between 2009 and 2013 and provided education and training, as well as business counselling. It was implemented in co-operation with the Slovak Chamber of Commerce and Industry – Bratislava Regional Chamber of Commerce and the Association of Women in Business. The project also partnered with the Wirtschaftskammer Wien in Austria.

Description: The project Entrepreneurially into the world of business 2013 was implemented in the framework of the Operational Programme for Human Resources Development for 2007-13. The project uses a combination of mentoring and training to help participants to acquire the core skills to launch and develop their business ideas. The target group for this project are highly educated unemployed individuals in Slovenia under the age of 35 who have a higher education, masters or doctoral degree, regardless of school or study programme.

Description: The aim of this scheme is to engage unemployed people in self-employment. The programme provides training, technical advice and financial support to launch a new business (up to EUR 10 000) for unemployed individuals who invested at least EUR 12 000 in long-term assets in the previous 6 months.

Description: This project is one element of a more general policy to increase women’s interest and participation in entrepreneurship. The project aims to increase general knowledge on women’s entrepreneurship in society so that more women will create businesses. It is aimed at experienced (i.e. ambassadors) and potential women entrepreneurs, as well as the general public. The project includes a variety of actions, focussing on a group of women entrepreneur role models.

Description: The Local Enterprise Growth Initiative (LEGI) programme ran from 2006 to March 2011. It aimed to release the economic and productivity potential of the most deprived local areas in England through entrepreneurship and investment and thus boosting local incomes and employment opportunities to build sustainable communities. The programme was based on national funding being provided to 20 deprived areas following a competitive tendering process. A local authority was eligible to apply for LEGI funding if it ranked among the 50 most deprived local authorities areas against the 2000 or 2004 Index of Multiple Deprivation indices. All bidders were required to provide an integrated support package and while the offerings varied widely, they often included a variety of support to enterprise and employment such as enterprise education, support with franchising opportunities, cluster and sector development, increased access to public procurement opportunities and attracting investment.