New grant targets bilingual community
Recognizing the diverse needs of Hispanic-owned businesses, The Loan Fund is continuing to strengthen its outreach to the Spanish bilingual community. With a $1.5 million grant from the Community Development Financial Institutions Fund, The Loan Fund will maintain aid to all businesses with COVID-19 support, in addition create bilingual materials to help the more than 60% of clients whose Spanish is their first language.
“Many of our clients when they come to us aren’t aware of the Spanish educational or training materials that are there. Some are weeks long, have a classroom setting and homework but our clients don’t have the time to do that. What we want to do is something that is convenient for them,” said George Kenefic, Director of Enterprise Empowerment.
The Loan Fund plans to create on-demand bilingual podcasts on how to create a business, what is needed to obtain a loan, and other business essentials, mixing in how to balance owning a business with family and culture, two core pieces of Latino life.
Marvin Lozano, The Loan Fund’s Entrepreneurial Consultant and author of “The U.S.-Latino Entrepreneur’s Guide to Balancing Business, Family and Culture,” says addressing all of these aspects as a whole is important because many Spanish-speaking entrepreneurs involve their family as partners, employees, funders or support.
Lozano, who has been working with the New Mexico Small Business Development Center on weekly bilingual workshops on COVID-19 relief and commercial loan preparation, says he’s worked with several Spanish-speaking entrepreneurs growing companies that have added a second location or more trucks to their fleet. In one case, a longtime employee bought a restaurant from the retiring owner. The retiring owner co-signed the loan for the employee who worked his way up in the business.
Spanish-speaking entrepreneurs “are a large, growing market and they’re needs have not been specifically addressed,” Lozano said.