This good practice developed by the Cooperativa Cramars in Italy comes from a funded equal opportunities project whose aim was to bring together groups of adult, entrepreneurship-oriented women to foster mutual collaboration in order to create long-term creative links and partnerships as drivers for gender equality and social cohesion and inspire participants to change in the fields of arts, culture, tourism and sustainable development. This was done by organizing a system of training breakfasts run at the local, national and community levels, involving female participants in meetings aimed at transferring specific creativity and creative thinking skills to them and sharing their challenges and opinions. Already from the first meeting, the informal mode, the common problems, the drive for exchange and change allowed an easy and reciprocal openness that enabled the organizers to collect sensitive data declined in expectations, objectives, hopes, need for help and support, need for exchange and to define common training needs (even if only pills) and to allow the educational center to focus the training on the requested topics. This was intended to promote active participation and women's empowerment by creating a community of practice that would encourage women to support causes close to their hearts and a supportive environment in which they could take advantage of informal learning and peer-mentoring also to develop new projects or business ideas for social change. In addition to sharing a training breakfast, an online exchange platform was implemented that enabled the women's group formed to activate networking opportunities and to share knowledge and experiences. The practice is scalable on different geographical areas, different training contents and target groups. The practice tackles diversity based on gender. |