NGO Women Directors in Malta (WDM) was set up in 2015 to act as a pressure group to promote more women in decision-making positions. Since 1996, more female students have graduated from the University of Malta than male students, so after 25 years, one would expect more top positions to be filled by more women.

However, this is not the case. In fact, Malta scores a mere 37.5 in the power indicator of the European Institute for Gender Equality index. The EU as a whole is weakest in this area, scoring an average of 55.

One of the EU projects WDM has engaged in is the development of an online course, entitled ‘Women in Power’, providing an introduction to gender equality themes and concepts. It was led by a Spanish entity and seven partners participated in the project.

The WDM’s latest project is the Academy for Women Entrepreneurs (AWE) course, which aims to provide women with knowledge on how to create and manage their own business. The course is sponsored by the US State Department and is provided in over 70 countries worldwide. WDM is the first entity to facilitate this course in Malta.

The Academy for Women Entrepreneurs (AWE) course aims to provide women with knowledge on how to create and manage their own business

The course itself is run by Thunderbird Global School of Management at Arizona University. It is provided through online modules, dealing with different aspects of running a business, including marketing, financing and human resources.

Each week, two facilitators from WDM, Rose Marie Azzopardi and Sonya Sammut, met online with the participants and provided the Maltese perspective. They augmented the material presented in the online modules and coloured the meetings with guest speakers from different business areas. The two-hour meetings were interactive and gave the participants the opportunity to discuss their business potential.

During the course, participants also developed their own business plan. At the end of the course, a competition was held whereby participants presented their business plans and pitched their ideas to an adjudicating board made up of representatives from Malta Enterprise, the University of Malta and the US Embassy in Malta. Three winners were provided with US$2,000 each as seed money.

The certificate ceremony for the 24 AWE graduates was held on December 10, where the three winners of the competition were announced. A reception was held afterwards, sponsored by the US Embassy in Malta. During the event, WDM president Azzopardi thanked the US Embassy in Malta for their hospitality, for making the AWE programme available to women in Malta, and for their assistance throughout the programme during 2021.

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