A SPECIAL project is in the pipeline to help female entrepreneurs in York and North Yorkshire.

York and North Yorkshire Chamber of Commerce is recruiting a project manager to take the helm of the scheme, which will be known as the Women In York and North Yorkshire Enterprise Project.

Funded by Yorkshire Forward, the project aims to encourage women in the area to start their own businesses by helping them access business support.

The project will gather information about the range of activity already supporting businesswomen in the county. It aims to encourage communication between existing networks.

Len Cruddas, chief executive of the chamber of commerce, said: "We are looking to employ someone to work with female entrepreneurs to help them access the existing business support that is available. There is quite a lot of support available already, but there is quite often a low take-up with women.

"We want someone to work with business owners and managers and help them to identify any barriers there may be and help them overcome them."

There are plans to create a web page for the project and possibly an on-line directory of women in business.

But Mr Cruddas stressed that the project was intended to work alongside existing schemes and not replace them.

"There are quite a few networks of women in business in the area already. We want to try and get all the networks together and hold an event," he said. There are plans to carry out a mapping exercise to see exactly what is available to York and North Yorkshire businesswomen.

Some of the organisations that already exist for businesswomen include:

lWomen in Rural Enterprise (WiRE) - an initiative which offers advice, support, base rate bank loans and networking opportunities to women working in rural areas.

lBusiness and Professional Women (BPW) York - a group which meets monthly giving its members networking opportunities.

lPhenomenal Women's Network - an evening networking session, which was recently brought to the city by York businesswomen Karin von Bismarck, of Family Au Pair, and Jane Tyler of Red-Black Software.

Updated: 10:14 Monday, April 26, 2004