The Impactory

At the beginning of April I attended a training called ” Promoting entrepreneurship” at Foundation for Women Entrepreneurs in Malta. This training was funded as part of the European Grundtvig program, now Erasmus +.

I was very interesting to learn more about Malta which I visited for the first time. Malta, an island, is located between Sicilia & the North Africa coast, is also one of the smalest country and densely populated country in the World. Malta joined the European Union just 10 years ago and has two official languages, Maltese and English, both widely spoken.

First of all, do you know the common point between Malta and Luxembourg?
The 2 countries are one of the smallest state of the EU member states with 400 000 (for Malta) and 500 000 inhabitants (Luxembourg).

I choose the Foundation for Women Entrepreneurs in Malta to follow a training on ” How to promote the culture of entrepreneurship” which seems very interesting & relevant do what we do here at the Impactory. The 5-day training focused on introducing entrepreneurship as a way of life, sharing of success stories and visits to real life projects and organisations that assist start-ups & SMEs

I was welcomed by MaryRose who is the Executive manager for the foundation and used to be an entrepreneur and started to work for the Foundation 11 years ago supporting other women in entrepreneurship and taking part in great projects accross the EU.

Even if the course was not solely focused on Women entrepreneurship, the gender subject was important for me. Indeed, I learned that being a Women and an entrepreneur is very uncommon in Malta. Even if very educated or in sucessful career, most of Maltese mums tend to to stay at home after the birth of their first child. As in Luxembourg and probably eveywhere else in the World, the Foundation notices that women lack of confidence and support, think they do not have the skills to start a business (event if they do) and often feel guilty to spend more time at work than at home with their family.

I also had the chance to visit one of the national Business incubator, Kordin Business Incubation Centre (KBIC), ran by Malta Enterprise, which host more than 10 young innovative companies. KBIC provides a cost-effective business environment, a professional image with managerial expertise geared to the needs of small business. The business incubated there are mainly in the field of Maritime, ITC & Biotech. The manager, Steve, explained that Malta welcome entrepreneurs from all over Europe. Entrepreneur may relocate to Malta to enjoy the sunny climate but also because Malta is the perfect EU State to do business with North Africa (Malta is only 600 km away from Tripoly) and The Middle East.

I also had the chance to meet the people at E-skills fondation and MITA (Malta Information Technology agency) and we discuss the opportunity to partner on a project on e-skills and coding, field we have been very active in at The Impactory. I was also pleased to meet with Matthew Gatt, chairman of the foundation & EU Code week ambassador for Malta (I am EU Code Week ambassador for Luxembourg since last year).

On my last day I had the pleasure to train with Angela the President of the Foundation. She introduced me to the possibility of EU fundings for education, SME and innovation. She also took me through Eramus + in details as well as Horizon 2020. I found this overview very interesting and I hope we will have the chance to get more involved at The Impactory in the future.

Finally, I was lucky to be able to visit the beautiful capital city of Valletta, Sliema & had the best business lunch in the superb ancient capital Mdina on the last day.

The training has been really beneficial in terms of learning how to promote the culture of entrepreneurship, exchanging experience, and discovering the culture and the context of a other European country. It was also a great opportunity to meet interesting people and generate new contacts for potential future projects.I certainly will be back in Malta and will keep in touch with the team at The Foundation. No doubt that this week has created a great connexion between The Impactory in Luxembourg & several new partners in Malta.

Marina THIRIET