‘’Developing an innovative women entrepreneurs’ Network in Local Governments as part of its Corporate Social Responsibility Action Plan’’

Although women entrepreneurship can be a significant factor for business creation and a dynamic part of the economy, the barriers to women’s entrepreneurship are various: women face greater obstacles in accessing information, training, and networks as well as policy and legal constraints. Especially in Greece (where the case study is conducted) , Women have to face more than Men the economic uncertainly due to the Crisis , poor access to funding and social, psychological and administrative barriers. A Methodology for developing an Innovative women enterpreneur’s Network, that will support local Governments and operate under its coordination, is presented and demonstrated in the case of an Association of Municipalities. This Methodology is part of the Sustainability UN Goals’ Agenda, that Municipalities utilize in order to realize projects ,that lead to Sustainability through Entrepreneurial activities and CSR actions. Innovative concepts for stakeholders’ analysis and management, new ways for the organization of the communication of the stakeholders as well as enhanced engagement methods are introduced and implemented in the case study presented in the paper in order to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed Methodology. The model uses a social tool, that does not just generate funds, but provides training, networking and business development for women entrepreneurship. It focuses on actions scheduled to support women’s participation in entrepreneurship. The developed concept aims to maximize the contribution of women into the regional and national economic growth and their competitiveness in the country as part of the wider Local governments’ Corporate Social Responsibility Action Plan. The analysis of the case study results enables the further development of the project into a national ‘Womanity’ Project intended to become a substantial part of the CSR Strategies Local Governments would implement in a national level in order to enable sustainable development with emphasis on the social pillar.