Paragon Europe organised ‘Entrepreneurship opportunities: accelerate growth and job creation’ during Global Entrepreneurship Week. This event took place within the margins of SCIENT, a European University-Business Alliance aiming to foster young SCIEntists’ ENTrepreneurial spirit, a project funded under Erasmus+ which started in 2015.

The event, organised in collaboration with Mcast Entrepreneurship Centre and with the participation of The Edward de Bono Institute for the Design and Development of Thinking and Malta Enterprise, consisted of a forum, followed by two parallel workshops.

Paragon Europe opened the forum with initiatives it is working on in relation to entrepreneurship, followed by a Malta Enterprise presentation of the help it offers to start-ups and a talk by Mcast and The Edward de Bono Institute for the Design and Development of Thinking on the need and importance of entrepreneurship and innovation.

Two workshops followed, one focusing on the aims and objectives of SCIENT, including best practices such as MLS BioDNA and Flying Squirrels Games Malta. A representative from the Microsoft Innovation Centre described the support they provide to start-ups not just in the IT sector but also in tourism and internet of things.

This was followed by an overview by Mita, whose support includes an open call for proposals leading to €15,000 in cash for the outstanding proposals.

The second workshop focused on the integration of people with disability in the workforce and entrepreneurship, in line with the Erasmus+ project, Integration of People with Disabilities through Learning, which is being implemented by FOPSIM in Malta. This workshop included best practices from Federatión Mestral, Spain, Istituto dei Sordi di Torino, Italy and APEIRONS, Latvia, together with a local intervention from ETC, Lino Spiteri Foundation and Dun Manwel Attard Young Adult Education Resource Centre.