Durham Business School's internationally acclaimed initiative for supporting women in business has announced a new overseas partnership.
Women into the Network (WIN) has teamed up with Newcastle City Council and leading institutions in Poland, Slovenia and Sweden to increase the number of women starting businesses in hi-tech and knowledge-based industries.
The initiative is called DIONE - diversity into networks across Europe - and funded by the European Community under the gender equality framework (2001-2005).
The aim is to support female entrepreneurs by using networking and mentoring to break down barriers.
Wendy Parvin of Durham Business School and mentoring director for WIN, said: "WIN uses networking to break down barriers such as lack of confidence, lack of opportunity, lack of advice and support, which stand in the way of women's success in business.
"Our role ... is specifically to research and evaluate the effectiveness of current policies, practices and mechanisms that promote gender equality in local economic development across each of the four partner countries.
"The findings of our research will be combined with the results from a series of networking events and mentoring programmes that will enable us to develop best-practice for networking and mentoring female entrepreneurs."
The partner organisations are the Gdansk Entrepreneurship Foundation in Poland; Zavod META in Slovenia, a private not-for-profit organisation researching and developing female and family entrepreneurship; Malmö University in Sweden and Newcastle City Council, which supports over 400 small and medium-sized companies in the knowledge sector every year.
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