The Espoo Regional Enterprise Agency (Espoon seudun uusyrityskeskus ry) served as a co-implementer in Laurea University of Applied Sciences’ “Path to entrepreneurship for immigrants” project. The main objective of the project was to promote entrepreneurship, self-employment, and employment among people with an immigrant background who are interested in entrepreneurship, particularly in sectors facing labour shortages or undergoing structural change. The project was a two-year ESF+ initiative carried out from 1 January 2024 to 31 December 2025.
The number of immigrant-background clients at the Espoo Regional Enterprise Agency had clearly increased during the two years preceding the project; nearly every second client seeking business advisory services was planning to start a business or considering entrepreneurship.
The project’s key target sectors were:
- construction
- ict
- the service sector, especially social and health care.
In addition, the project aimed to create a description of the entrepreneurial pathway to support service guidance and to enhance the visibility of services related to immigrant entrepreneurship.
Advice, training and networking
Within the last two years, the share of immigrant clients at Espoo Regional Enterprise Agency has increased clearly; almost one in two clients that are interested in becoming an entrepreneur have an immigrant background. The practical experience of supporting immigrant clients has highlighted the need to design service pathways to their needs to guarantee a smooth transition to entrepreneurship or to other career options that may require further education.
The project designs the immigrant entrepreneurship model, that includes holistic service pathways to different client groups: to those that are (1) ready to become entrepreneurs, to those who (2) need to develop their business idea further or gain new knowledge and to those who (3) would benefit from working life experience.
The pathways include services that are needed to support the needs of different genders as well as the families.The service pathways are piloted in collaboration with the city of Espoo. Laurea’s role focuses on supporting the clients when they need new skills and capabilities and collaborating with network partners to offer employment opportunities. Based on their needs, the clients are guided to find the right training solutions; utilizing existing solutions and tailoring new ones.
The goal is to develop the business ideas and to enhance resilience in the face of changes in the future.The service pathways will be visualized and used as the base to form a landing page for the immigrant clients to the webpages of BusinessEspoo.
Path to entrepreneurship for immigrants 2024-2026
Additional information:
Project coordinator Nikke Vainikka
nikke.vainikka@uusyrityskeskus.fi
