As part of the celebrations of International Women's Day, CATÓLICA-LISBON held another initiative of the We@CATÓLICA-LISBON program, on March 10. This program, totally free, aimed to support female entrepreneurship and consisted of several workshops whose purpose was to provide women entrepreneurs with the necessary tools for the success of their business. Nearly 200 women attended the 2023 edition.
Opening the event, Filipe Santos, DEAN of CATÓLICA-LISBON, begins by praising this day where the focus is on entrepreneurship and especially on female entrepreneurship. "Women are powerful beings, capable of changing the world". Filipe Santos explained his vision of what it is to be an enterprising person: "It's the one who looks around, sees a problem, and tries to find a way to solve it. And we know that women have characteristics, such as empathy, that are the right and assertive skills for this type of initiative.
The Dean of CATÓLICA-LISBON also left an encouraging and challenging message to all entrepreneurs: "find your passion, know and know your skills and apply them in a solution that solves some problem in society or that neither society nor public policy is able to answer". Filipe Santos also reinforces that "if you frame your company in a purpose that responds to a need in society, you will create more loyalty, value, and trust for your business.
How, and why, did this initiative come about?
Rute Xavier, Executive Director of the Center for Applied Studies and responsible for We@CATÓLICA-LISBON explains that these initiatives are important because "we began to realize that male entrepreneurship is much easier to fit into accelerators or other capacity building units that exist. Entrepreneurs have more access to funding, training, networking, and we realized that women have more difficulty in accessing the same tools, have more difficulty in making some part of their family budget available to invest in a course or training that will give them this empowerment and tools to launch their own business, which, many times, is not only their own business, but their own job. And, therefore, they end up creating their business a little bit based on kindness and common sense. We wanted to change that. This is also a way for the University to give back to society, based on its values."
During the day, the participants had the opportunity to sign up for Workshops whose themes interested them the most, according to the topics they would most like to develop:
- How to develop a business plan, by Professor Rute Xavier
- How to do the financial management of your business, lectured by Hugo Rosa Ferreira, from Doutor Finanças
- How to manage a negotiation, by Professor Ricardo Reis
- How to communicate your business, by Alexandra Abreu
- How social networks can leverage your business, by André Alves
- How to use management indicators to manage your business, by Karen Frisch
- I'm Remarkable (Google), by Cristina Almeida.
For Alexandra Abreu, Director of Communication of CATÓLICA-LISBON, and founder of the communication agency Think PR, "these initiatives are a beautiful way for the Catholic University to help and serve society. It's part of its DNA. So, and because there is still a lot of gender inequality in Portugal, this initiative is aimed at all women who have just launched or are thinking of launching their business. We were very pleased with the enormous interest the initiative had and we hope to have contributed to help these women entrepreneurs".
Catarina Tomé, participant in the event, says that these workshops were very important because "I needed to get some notions of the market again and to have this kind of synergy, to see people who want to make things happen. These workshops are very important, for now, to realize that we are capable and look around us and see older people, younger people, and realize that there is always time to restart ourselves, to lose the fear of risk. And I think that sometimes, alone, we end up dispersing ourselves and getting lost in so much information that exists”.
Cátia Lobato da Costa does not have her own business, but it is something she is already working on. At this moment, she is diversifying her professional area of work, from banking to a more neurolinguistic part and "I came to these workshops precisely to try to understand how I can try to create my brand". She did the Negotiation Skills Workshop because, she believes, "it's a point that I don't have much in my day to day and I know that negotiating is an art, but it's also an art that can be learned. So, to that extent, it was interesting because there are concepts here that I didn't have clear, and it was good to open that range a little bit."
Vanídia Mendes is a stylist, fashion designer and manager of her own brand, where she makes custom clothing. "I think these Workshops are extremely important because we are often focused on our area of expertise, in my case I am considered an artisan, because I work with my hands, but then we neglect this part of business management, of finances, and we find ourselves stuck in a situation that could have been avoided if you had taken care of that basis of the business, which is for everything to work very well. The issue of access is very important, because sometimes we don't have the financial capacity to pay for these trainings, classes, courses, and for me this was an open class, of sharing. And the way we were treated and how we could talk openly ends up generating interest in the Catholic itself and I found it very useful, and I will use these tips for life, no doubt."
When asked about the importance of this being a day specially thought for women, Vanídia added that the big issue "is the valorization, validating that we have a place, we have a voice, we have something to offer and add, regardless of being women, we can also be businesswomen, women who create, women who aggregate, so this day was very important", she reflected.
Hugo Ferreira, Partner of Doctor Finance and Member of the Board - responsible for the area of business-, confirmed that "these initiatives are very important because we have fantastic entrepreneurs spread across this country, who live daily with a huge time constraint and can't dedicate themselves to look at their business and see whether or not it is sustainable or how it can grow, because they often lack tools. And, therefore, I think that these kinds of initiatives by the Catholic University are really important, precisely so that we can try, in a very simple way and with a practical vision, to pass on some tools and some tips that can actually make a difference in the way our entrepreneurs look at their businesses, how they analyze them, and also how they can identify ways to ensure their financial sustainability”.
Hugo Ferreira congratulated Católica for this type of initiatives, considering them fundamental "because we have to keep breaking the barriers that divide men from women, the barriers to access to companies, to entrepreneurship, the barrier to success and professional achievement. We must continue to break all of this, and if affirmative action is needed, such as quotas or events dedicated to women, this is more than natural: it is necessary," he clarifies.
Throughout the day, the sharing of knowledge not only among the trainers but also among the registered participants was remarkable. Fully aware that knowledge is born by sharing experiences, good practices and advice, these women ended the day exchanging contacts, sharing tools with each other, identifying difficulties and creating a unique synergy that was felt in all the feedback that CATÓLICA-LISBON collected throughout the event.