Vienna, Austria: Talking business in your mother tongue
- Responsible Organisations: Mingo Migrant Enterprises (MME) (Civil society)
- ILO Regions: Europe and Central Asia
- Country(ies): Austria
- Thematic areas: Social integration and inclusion
- MLFLM: 14.
Description
Mingo Migrant Enterprises (MME) in Vienna offers immigrant entrepreneurs business counselling in many languages. Over 37% of entrepreneurs in Vienna have a migrant background, which equates to approximately 16,000 businesses. Since 2007, the City of Vienna has acknowledged the importance of its entrepreneurial class by creating a dedicated service stream for the unique needs of its migrant entrepreneurs within its business incubation agency. Today, Vienna's premiere start-up initiative is better known as Mingo, which stands for 'move in and grow'. MME was created in 2008 to support and improve the economic potential of migrant businesses. To break down barriers, MME offers its services not only in German, but also in a number of other languages common to migrants in Vienna. MME services include coaching on financing and business plans; intercultural classes to help immigrants understand Viennese business culture; and networking events as well as personal consultations in languages such as Turkish, English and Russian. In 2011, MME expanded its services with free bilingual one-day workshops that are held in German, but where multilingual trainers can explain technical terms in the mother tongue. MME has served over 750 SMEs to date. It has created a special service stream for migrant women (over 4,000 served) and launched the Vienna Start-Up Award in 2015 with a 6000 euro prize.
This practice was kindly contributed by Cities of Migration, a program of the Global Diversity Exchange, Ryerson University (Toronto, Canada). See more at the Cities of Migration website: http://citiesofmigration.ca/good_idea/talking-business-in-your-mother-tongue/.
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