The Danube Cup conference was organized by the Corvinus University of Budapest and the Faculty of Economic and Social Sciences of Budapest University of Technology and Economics, as well as the Danube Cup network on 28 April 2022. The goal of the event was to highlight the trends in entrepreneurship and start-up education, to share experiences and knowledge and point out applied measures which can be implemented at other Higher Education Institutions (HEIs), incubators or accelerators.

As a part of the conference’s programme, Katalin Oborni from HÉTFA Research Institute, together with Loretta Huszák from Corvinus University of Budapest have delivered a presentation on “Entrepreneurship mentoring for women at universities – The process of counselling and the experience gained”. More specifically, they have presented the results of the research analysing the success of the female students’ mentoring activity carried out under the ifempower project. The findings of the analysis showed that mentorship-based support for female students is particularly important in the early stage of entrepreneurial ideas, where openness, motivation and commitment create trust. It is proved that especially if mentoring support is provided, future women entrepreneurs – already in the ideation stage of their business development – will be able to create successful initiatives.

The ifempower project co-funded by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union was implemented between 2018-2021 under the lead of HÉTFA Research Institute together with 8 partners from 7 different countries. Its main aim was to empower females to get engaged in self-employment and entrepreneurship especially in SMEs.

More details on the DanubeCup network: https://danubecup.eu/

More details on the ifempower project: https://ifempower.eu/