Cooperation national
Women's entrepreneur development is one of the priority objectives of our Association. We associate over 100 women: entrepreneurs, scientists, journalists and public persons - owners or representatives of many important enterprises and institutions (members).
Forum's range of activities includes a constant exchange of business contacts. Our companies cooperate mutually, supporting each other. In the future we would like to establish a platform for the exchange of knowledge and experiences of not only among our members, but also widely understood business exchange.
Now we play a role of an association supporting and promoting entrepreneurship of our members, by initiation and co-organising training, internal training for personal development (meetings), by presenting the results of various scientific researches, which are published in the Woman and Business or by organising symposia and conferences.
Women associated in the Forum (and - by this - companies represented by them) are not only beneficiaries of the Association activities, but they also participate actively in establishment of joint ventures and regular operations of the IFW (other activities).
The International Forum for Women cooperates with many state institutions and non-government organisations, within the field of our statutory objectives. In March 2002, we signed the agreement on cooperation with the Polish Association of Women Business Owners. Together with the Centre for the Advancement of Women, we organised the VI Polish edition of the contest "Women of Europe 2003/2004" and in 1999 we implemented a project entitled "Women on the labor market: negative changes and entrepreneurship as a consequence of economic transformation". This project was financed within the framework of "Social costs of economic transformation of Central Europe (SOCO)" program by the Vienna Humanities Institute. It results were published under the same title, in Polish and English.
We cooperate with the Ministry of Economy (conference entitled "Financing of small and medium enterprises by venture capital" (Finansowanie małych i średnich przedsiębiorstw przez venture capital); guide on enterprises led by women in Poland), the Polish Agency for Enterprise Development (gathering information on funds that may be used by small and medium enterprises) and the Euro Info Center. We cooperate on a regular basis with WSE in the field of research and publication "Women and Business" ("Kobieta i Biznes"). In cooperation with Firma 2000, we conducted pioneer research on 20 thousand Polish managers in Poland and we organised a conference, which was in fact training directed to women holding managerial positions.
We constantly broaden our contacts with national partners. Since December 2004, we have participated in two projects of the Community Initiative EQUAL. One of them was the Gender Index, implemented by the partnership established among the UNDP, the Warsaw School of Economics, the Polish Confederation of Private Employers, and the Governmental Plenipotentary for Equal Opportunities for Women and Men and Nordea Polska Insurance Company (Towarzystwo Ubezpieczeń na Życie). The second project is called ENTER and concerns promotion of telework within the small and medium enterprises. The latter project will be implemented by the partnership established between the Institute of Telecommunication and Information Technology (InstytutTechnik Telekomunikacyjnych i Informatycznych (ITTI) based in Poznan and the Centre for the Advancement of Women . Both projects will be completed within three years.
At meetings of the Forum, our guests were representatives of many important enterprises, i. e. Thomas International, BCI Barter, Dermika, Murator Expo, Innova Capital, Atlantic, The Protocol School of Poland, PKO BP, the State Labor Inspection, and the Mikro Fund.
Since 1999, we have cooperated on regular basis with Avon which helps us in organising Enterprising Woman contest.
The training "Quo vadis, woman of the XXI century" organised together with the Bastion Consulting Group brings back nice memories. The main watchword of the meeting was "2002 Business Training Show Series - keys to success in life and business". Three-day event was held in the Palace of Culture and Science (PkiN) Congress Hall on 7 and 21 February and on 7 March 2002.
When organising meetings and conferences directed at both our members and other women entrepreneurs we keep tight contacts with high-standard hotels. This cooperation is a great help for us, and pleasure at the same time. As the forum of enterprising women, while selecting our partners, we put their professionalism in the first place. Our partners are:
- The Hotel Hyatt in Warsaw, where we presently organise monthly IFW meetings
- The Hotel InterContinental in Warsaw - that was the host for some of our meetings in 2004.
- The Hotel Nadmorski and Genesis SPA - hat offer the members of the International Forum for Women discounts for spa and stay in the hotel.
Our stay in partner hotels is always organised at the highest level and deserves our highest respect. The IFW is a dynamically developing organisation and this is why we are open to interesting and new proposals for cooperation. We invite you to contact us via e-mail (mfk@mfk.org.pl) or telephone (prof. Halina Brdulak, tel. 0 601 263 502).