Blog Post

Co-creating to thrive together

Dorangela Giraldo • 18 February 2020

EHV Innovation Cafe talk

On the evening of February 13, the International Creative Women community hosted the weekly talk session at the Eindhoven Innovation Café in Kazerne. On this occasion, we wanted to share how we used the concept of co-creation to develop our community, our projects and services.

Leading this event was a beautiful and inspiring experience. We enjoyed the ride and the destination. During the preparation of the talk, we could remember our feelings and fears, and how we started to deal with our own troubles. And yes, that is the truth, International Creative Women emerged as a defensive response to survive to the changes imposed by the new life in The Netherlands. We definitely did not want to give up, we were determined to find our place in a society we were discovering.

We decided to show this with examples, at the end we have more than 100 examples of women who have challenged their lives to do different things in this country. 4 entrepreneur women shared a bit of their stories, how they had to reinvent themselves, how they had to push their own limits to feel productive, integrated and happy in this new environment.

The first creative entrepreneur was Mari Osses founder of Ikebana. Mari is from Brazil and there she used to be an account manager. In 2015, she moved to The Netherlands.

“No friends, just me, my husband and our baby. I had hard times and it was difficult to adapt. Besides, I couldn’t find a job”.

Mari tells how lonely and sad she was feeling until she found a hobby, a passion! Later on, she transformed this passion into a business: “I started to learn the art of Ikebana and with the guidance from my teacher, I was giving some classes. This practice healed me. In 2018, I offered Ikebana flower arrangements to the meditation studio I was attending, and through a friend I got in contact with ICW. They offer me the possibility to give ikebana workshops in the ICW events, it was amazing!..”’

“I felt part of something bigger with so many internationals. From just expat espouse I became an International Creative Woman”.

The second entrepreneur speaker was Snehal More. She comes from India, and she told us how after the honeymoon period she was having rough times:

“I came to the Netherlands because my husband got a job in IT, I was happy discovering the country, travelling. For me it was a big change, I come from Mumbai so Eindhoven doesn’t feel like a city for me. But after a while, I start feeling lonely, bored, almost depressed. I couldn’t find a job and I didn’t know what to do”.

Snehal started to learn, she studied photography and founded More Dimensions Photography, then she studied Graphic Design and started her second business: Bombay Street food. Her successful businesses are evidence of her potential as a woman and entrepreneur.

Then, people had the chance to meet Dora Popella, she comes from Hungary.

She didn’t arrive to the Netherlands following love but searching for adventure and new possibilities. Dora is also a graphic designer who after some time looking for a job, decided to start her own business: Black Monty studio.

She gives workshops at the ICW events related to social media and branding and collaborates actively with other members of the community to help them to grow their businesses.

The last story was brought by Sally Ocana, one of the founders of International Creative Women.

Sally is Colombian, she arrived to Enschede some years ago, when her husband started his PhD.

“It was an adventure, that took us to different countries until we finally decided to stay in Eindhoven.

"I am an architect, but I couldn’t find a job in my area, I didn’t speak Dutch and my English was not so good, so the only job I could get was in a call center. So I had to do something, that job clearly didn’t give me the happiness I was looking for”.

Sally started to use her other skills, what She learnt from her mother and decided to start Sándalo Atelier; a business of ecofriendly jewelry that connected her to her roots and made her feel so much better. Years later, Sally co-founded International Creative Women, directs a dance group of Colombian Music and is passionate about helping people, especially women.

These four women shared beautiful stories, real life stories full of emotions, struggles, and victories, stories that definitely inspire others to move forward. These talks showed how International Creative women is the result of transforming obstacles into opportunities, a hobby into a business, a disadvantage into a motivation and turn negative situations into opportunities.

Co-Creation: The backbone of International Creative Women

“Co-creation works because even the greatest creative rarely knows the complete answer”

John Williams, co-founder of WikiSolutions

But how we achieve this? Yolima v.d Berkmortel, co-founder of ICW, explained how Co-creation was fundamental to not only build International Creative Women but to decide the future of it.

She told us how ICW organizes events to promote the entrepreneur women using co-creation. They plan these events with the women having stands , the end users who attend the event and the institutions who participate. Together they create the content, decided the style, the marketing plan, etc. So at the end they not only have a product: the event, but they got more connected, the community gained engagement, efficiency and they were so much happier.

ICW takes advantage of the great diversity between their members, they come from more than 20 nationalities and the women have very different backgrounds, from accountants to artists. The co-creation process has allowed to embrace the diversity at the service of the whole network. Today International Creative Women is modelling Co-creation as a model of business and social entrepreneurship.

Yolima invited the assistants to do a small exercise, one that ICW uses it regularly. The Crazy 8’s, a fast idea generation exercise that that challenges people to produce eight distinct ideas in eight minutes. Ideas about what? About everything, a new product, a service, a problem to solve. For this session, we presented a question… how we can promote the concept of #buylocal?

The group was busy thinking, sketching and producing so many different ideas. ICW will continue this process in the next weeks. If you want to be part of it, contact us! We will be happy to include in our co-creation sessions.

We also want to say thanks to EHV Innovation café for opening their doors and let us share our story and the stories of so many women that are in this city creating and trying to be an active part in the society.

We want not only to keep co-creating, but co-dream, co-innovate, co-celebrate and co-experience. We will love to put into action all these verbs indicating the transformation of women's lives.

We hope you all get inspired!

Dorángela Giraldo is one of the ICW ambassadors, Psychologist and Life Coach. Although she is not an entrepreneur with a business at ICW, she is behind the strategies, event organization, community structure and of course the co-creation process.

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