Broadlake and TU Dublin Entrepreneurship Course for Refugees
This is an online course, and all support activities will also take place online and is open to those ONLY who have refugee or asylum seeker status.
A new online course on Entrepreneurship for Refugees and Asylum Seekers who wish to start their own business will begin this January. The course is being funded by TU Dublin in partnership with Broadlake. Classes will begin March 13th and will continue each Wednesday for 12 lectures from 11.00 – 13.00.
The course will be hosted and delivered by TU Dublin through its Continuing Professional Development programme, while the mentoring programme will be delivered through the Open Doors Initiative. The course is open to anyone who self-identifies as a Refugee or Asylum Seeker and who wishes to start their own business. However, the course is not suitable for a person who has already started their own business or simply wants to learn about entrepreneurship.
The course requires participants to have a business idea that they wish to evaluate as a sustainable enterprise. During the course, participants will cover the following topics:
- Distinctive challenges facing Refugees and Asylum Seekers becoming self-employed
- Idea evaluation
- Customer segmentation
- Customer relationships and channels
- Clarifying the Value Proposition
- Balancing business and personal well-being
- Key business activities
- Key resources and partners
- Developing financial projections
- Test marketing your idea
- Understanding legal matters
- Presenting your business plan
The module will include a range of Guest Speakers whose experiences and expertise are relevant to the target audience. Using a newly-developed online tool that will enable participants to develop their idea on a week-by-week basis, plus adopting Universal Design for Learning principles, a customised experiential learning approach will allow each participant to maximise their learning from the course.
The course will consist of 12 online lectures followed by a 4-week period to allow for the completion and submission of a Business Plan. The course is being offered at NFQ Level 6 of the Irish National Framework of Qualifications (NFQ), and successful participants will be awarded 5 ECTS credits. Participants on the course will be students of TU Dublin and will therefore be eligible to access any of TU Dublin’s resources (e.g. library, disability support services). Additionally, each participant will be allocated a business mentor through the Open Doors Initiative who will support them with the development of their business idea.
Potential participants are required to submit an application form that includes a 500-word summary; the summary of their business idea can be typed into the form or else created via video or audio file. The summary should address the following questions:
- Are you starting the business on your own or with co-founders?
- What is the product/service?
- What problem is your product/service solving?
- Who will buy it?
- Why is your product/service better than what is already available?
The course will conclude with the presentation of Business Plans to a panel of potential funders of the business. While the submission of every Business Plan will be evaluated for the awarding of 5 ECTS credits, only final business proposals considered sustainable will be eligible to make a presentation for potential funding.
The application form is here . Closing date is February 29th.