We are so delighted that during 2022 our Habitat for Neighborhood Business program began returning to pre Covid “normal” and hope that’s the case for you, your family and friends.
This has been a year of significant program growth as students increasingly approached us for internships and opportunities to work directly with our HNB entrepreneurs. We expanded our Graduate Student Capstone and Undergraduate Service Leadership programs to involve more than 50 Chaifetz School students. Simultaneously, referrals from our entrepreneurs along with recent, very positive television and newspaper articles fueled additional growth.
Building on this momentum and seeing our under-resourced communities increasingly welcoming of our program we will be entering 2023 with important modifications to serve a broader base of entrepreneurs, create more student involvement and better utilize our volunteer mentor specialists and industry experts.
During 2023 we will launch a third Mentor Forum of 8-12 entrepreneurs, modify our program flexibility to accommodate many small businesses and create a virtual and in-person “round table” series focusing on challenges unique to our entrepreneurs, facilitated by HNB’s volunteer mentors and where possible faculty or students with specific expertise.
Many of us still enjoy reading something written on “real paper,” so we’ve enclosed our newsletter, in addition to one soon to arrive in e-mail. For those who attended our recent Recognition Event at SLU we hope you enjoyed yourself and had a chance to meet and possibly do business with some of our program entrepreneurs, the event was a real highlight for them.
In closing, we greatly appreciate your past support and hope you will consider assisting us in reaching an even wider group of entrepreneurs who are ready to “trade a job for a career” and at the same time make their neighborhoods a safer and better place to live and raise a family.
Help support St. Louis city minority businesses through your donation to HNB.