What is the role of business in solving our community's challenges? By Nancy Hernandez
President of the Hispanic Collaborative that is working, in collaboration with MMAC, to improving outcomes for Hispanics in the Milwaukee Region.
B
y now, many of us have heard all about social entrepreneurs, hybrid value chains, and Michael Porter’s TED Talk on how business is best poised to solve big social problems. But while we may have heard of business as a solution to social problems, COVID-19 gives us an opportunity to get off the sidelines and participate.
and increasing upward mobility in urban and Hispanic communities is tied to the entrepreneurial communities. They buoy neighborhoods, homeownership and property values. They create opportunities for next generations by financially enabling higher levels of educational attainment. They create greater investment in neighborhoods and employ greater percentages of their own community.
Hispanic and African American This health crisis has communities have not yet fully served to exacerbate recovered from the Great Recession the disparities felt by of 2008. The question for the our Hispanic and African business community today is, will you American communities that be better off in 10 years if we have a: were present way before the businesses of color • Smaller less diverse supply chain pandemic. It has halted all may close in our • Less skilled workforce income for three out of every • Greater community cost of 10 Hispanic households, community due emergency needs and reduced income for to the pandemic. • Smaller pipeline of diverse college an additional four more graduates households. Before it is over, it may claim the home of If not, then consider how you can one out of every 10 hardsupport our Hispanic and African American businesses working people of color in Milwaukee, who may have with vendor relationships, mentoring, meaningful leveraged the work of several generations to achieve contracts and training/access to succeed with the the dream of homeownership. It may impede four out of 10 current Black and Hispanic college students from transformations that your organizations will be going through in post COVID-19 world. It is time to get off the becoming the first in their family to graduate from sidelines. college, despite their hard work in overcoming the odds to get there in the first place. And it may close the doors of one out of every two businesses of color in our community, causing more financial devastation in its wake. "(The pandemic) has halted
1 out of 2
We cannot let Hispanic and African American firms experience greater failure rates than the rest of the businesses around them. The economic stability
all income for 3 out of 10 Hispanic households, and reduced income for an additional 4 more."
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