31 May, 2016

The Lord Mayor of Cork awarded certificates to a group of participants for successfully completing a Senior Entrepreneur Action programme in the Rubicon Centre in Cork Institute of Technology on Tuesday 31st May. The event showcased the programme content and the exciting business ideas of the programme participants.

The programme targeted individuals who are over 50 years of age and have an interest in being entrepreneurial and/or starting a business. The general aims of the Senior Entrepreneurship Action Programme is to encourage participants to explore, identify and plan a potential entrepreneurial, or micro enterprise, opportunity in a particular sector, social environment or organisation. Programme participants were assisted in identifying the core skills, values and attributes of the entrepreneur and how to relate these to their personal skill set and life experience. Participants were shown how to develop the necessary marketing and networking skills to garner the necessary support for a new business idea/self-employment and how to develop the skills related to managing and planning a business and assisted in how to calculate and source funding for a sustainable and scalable idea or business.

Cork’s Lord Mayor, Cllr. Chris O'Leary, spoke very highly of the programme saying ‘older people are generally more capable of starting and running businesses than their younger counterparts. However, to embark on an entrepreneurial path, we often need to acquire skills and training, and the necessary supports.’ He then continued to compliment the strong support system to assist in start-up businesses in the Cork region.

The showcase event came to an end with participants networking with support staff, guests and entrepreneurs building on their business networks, many hesitant to leave and busily making plans to keep in touch to receive regular updates on their future progress. The Senior Entrepreneurship Action Programme ran every Tuesday for the last 8 weeks in the Rubicon Centre, CIT. The Programme is part of the MYBUSINESS project, an Erasmus+ KA2 Strategic Partnerships project funded by the European Commission. Project partners from Greece, Spain, Austria, Romania and Belgium are collaborating to achieve the project goals and the partner responsible for the programme delivery in Ireland is the Hincks Centre for Entrepreneurship excellence, a research centre based in Cork Institute of Technology.

Further information can be found on the project website http://mybusiness-project.eu