Women Entrepreneurship Centre (WEC)

WEC is a not-for-profit organisation working towards empowerment through inspiring, educating and entrepreneurial leadership.

WHO: Women Entrepreneurship Centre (WEC)
WHAT: ENTREPRENEUR LEARNING & MENTORING; INNOVATION HUB & Coworking
HQ: Auckland
ESTABLISHED: 2016

INTRODUCTION

Women Entrepreneurship Centre (WEC) is a not-for-profit organization based in Auckland, New Zealand working towards empowerment through inspiring, educating, and entrepreneurial leadership. WEC’s process in entrepreneurship and leadership involves awareness programs, training, skills development, mentoring, business incubation, information sharing, and networking and marketing assistance including digital skills.

The Centre aims to develop community leadership and entrepreneurial thinking creating social and economic values in New Zealand through innovative education programs, research, mentoring, consultancy, and events for all ages and cultures. The Centre offers various programmes to support aspiring entrepreneurs.

WHO DO YOU WORK WITH AND WHAT KEY CHALLENGES DO YOU HELP THEM SOLVE?

Our target audience for the business startup program:

Thinking of starting their own business.
Start an online blog/website.
Own a blog shop and would like to formalise it into a registered business/taking it to the next level.
Keen to learn a little more about branding/marketing your small business.
Wants to convert their hobby into business
Who needs some motivation and inspiring words to take the next action.

Our target audience for the Digital Boost program:

Migrant startups / in an early stage of startup
Small and medium business owners
Home based businesses for any business
Wanting to work better with digital technologies and looking to modernize internal processes to make
them more efficient.
Wanting to use technology to better support customers’ experiences.
Anyone who wants to learn new skills and ways of thinking about digital, to apply to their work
environment.

WEC’s SERVICES

Overview:

LIVE YOUR DREAM
DIGITAL BOOST for small businesses
CO-INSPIRE
New Program: Digital skills for non-profit organizations/Community workers

We provide resources and templates for all our above workshop participants.

Description:

LIVE YOUR DREAM: The goal of these workshops is to encourage participants to develop self-awareness and inspire their creative potential with a specific focus on their contribution to a more diverse and innovative New Zealand workforce and society. The program includes hands-on activities to know themselves better, to identify opportunities, and to put in action new tools and techniques for creative thinking, collaboration, leadership, and entrepreneurial logic.

DIGITAL BOOST for small businesses: The main objective of the proposed project is to promote knowledge sharing and training on how different types of small businesses and Migrant startups among ethnic communities can seize the benefits of digitalisation, improve knowledge and use of digital technology, creating networking and support system for their digitalisation, create the confidence in digital literacy to manage personal information and improves digital skills and creativity

CO-INSPIRE: Co-Inspire is a forum in the form of meetups that meets every month with the objective of providing a unique platform that allows the community to network, share ideas, learn something new, and many more things.

Digital skills for non-profit organizations/Community workers: Non-profit sector faces new challenges in maintaining and building human and financial support, especially during the pandemic. The effective use of digital technologies has the potential to enhance engagement and build organizational effectiveness. Our program will provide community workers at all levels to develop the skills and capacity required to engage with the relevant existing and emerging technologies and platforms.

Co-Inspire Meetup – Inspiration for growing entrepreneurs.

EVENTS

Digital Boost For SMEs (FREE workshop series)

Co-Inspire Meetups

Live your Dream/NEST

Youth Boot Camps

RESOURCES

We provide online access to resources and templates via WEC website private login. This is available for all those who enroll for any of our above programs.

HIGHLIGHTS

We have been operating from 2016 and supported more than 300 participants under the business startup program and our new Digital boost for small businesses workshop series.

We believe that we have achieved the following by conducting our programs for the community:

Inspired, activated talent, raise awareness, and build capability and leadership for women enterprise.
Supporting diverse women to grow and bring their dream into real life.
There is a need to create more role models so that it can inspire younger generation to take the jump to startup. We are aiming to cultivate entrepreneurial mind-set and create more awareness about entrepreneurship and existing entrepreneurs who have achieved success in their fields. Others should feel inspired and thereby have the courage to step out of the ordinary and do something different.
Our Digital Boost workshops have helped small businesses to make actions in offering new products and services, engage with customers in a different way and invest and adapt to new technologies.
WEC strongly believes in Community led growth: Business and community are connected; they are no longer two different entities. Increasing local businesses means creating more jobs to encourage more people to stay in the area. This not only allows people to work closer to home, but also improves the quality of life for the community and connecting them together.

WHAT EXCITES YOUR TEAM ABOUT THE WORK YOU DO?

We are a small but strong team having great passion for entrepreneurship and startups. Our team consist of industry experts and academics. WE always believe that experience alone is not enough to make the team thrive. shared entrepreneurial passion and shared strategic vision are the key drive of our team.