Belgrade Partner Meeting: Building a Shared Foundation for IMPACTA

On 10 March 2026, we met in Belgrade for the first day of the in-person IMPACTA partner meeting, hosted by the Association of Business Women in Serbia (ABW) at the SKIP Center. The day focused on reflection, exchange and strategic alignment, helping us strengthen our shared vision for the next phase of the project.

The meeting opened with a welcome from the host organisation and a broader look at the progress made so far. This created a space to reflect on how IMPACTA has developed since its launch: from bringing together a diverse transnational consortium to mapping local realities, engaging stakeholders and deepening our understanding of the challenges and opportunities women entrepreneurs face across the Danube Region.

A central aim of the first day was to revisit the role of knowledge and experience already available within our consortium. Rather than starting from scratch, we are building on existing insights, methods and good practices from different countries and organisations. This gives the project a strong basis for creating solutions that are both innovative and grounded in real experience.

An important part of the discussion focused on the country-level analyses presented by AFAM. Through these examples, we gained a clearer picture of how different national and local contexts shape the realities of women’s entrepreneurship across the Danube Region. The exchange highlighted that entrepreneurship support cannot follow a one-size-fits-all approach. Different target groups, territorial realities and support environments require responses that are flexible, inclusive and grounded in local needs.

The exchange also highlighted the complexity of the project’s target landscape. IMPACTA addresses disadvantaged and vulnerable women, but we also operate in a wider ecosystem that includes trainers, local stakeholders, innovators, business support actors and, in some cases, investors. This makes the project especially interesting: we work not only on the level of individual support, but also on the level of relationships, structures and local opportunity systems that shape women’s entrepreneurial pathways.

Another key theme of the day was stakeholder cooperation. We discussed how local and transnational stakeholder engagement can become a real driving force in the project, rather than simply a formal framework around it. The conversations reflected our shared understanding that strong cooperation with local actors is essential if we want to remain relevant, rooted in local needs and capable of generating longer-term impact.

This also brought attention to the importance of co-creation. IMPACTA is not being developed in isolation, but through an ongoing dialogue with those who can contribute practical knowledge, policy perspectives, community links and direct experience from the field. This approach strengthens both the quality of the project and its potential sustainability.

Overall, the first day of the Belgrade meeting showed that IMPACTA is entering a more mature and action-oriented phase. We are moving beyond initial mapping and preparation, and beginning to shape the tools, frameworks and collaborative structures that will guide the next steps of the project. At the same time, the discussions in Belgrade confirmed something equally important: that we share not only tasks and objectives, but also a growing common understanding of what meaningful and inclusive support for women entrepreneurs can look like in practice.