2 minute read
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.
By 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.
This health crisis has served to exacerbate the disparities felt by our Hispanic and African American communities that were present way before the pandemic. It has halted all income for three out of every 10 Hispanic households, and reduced income for an additional four more households. Before it is over, it may claim the home of one out of every 10 hardworking people of color in Milwaukee, who may have leveraged the work of several generations to achieve the dream of homeownership. It may impede four out of 10 current Black and Hispanic college students from becoming the first in their family to graduate from 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.
We cannot let Hispanic and African American firms experience greater failure rates than the rest of the businesses around them. The economic stability 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 communities have not yet fully recovered from the Great Recession of 2008. The question for the business community today is, will you be better off in 10 years if we have a:
• Smaller less diverse supply chain
• Less skilled workforce
• Greater community cost of emergency needs
• Smaller pipeline of diverse college graduates
If not, then consider how you can support our Hispanic and African American businesses with vendor relationships, mentoring, meaningful contracts and training/access to succeed with the transformations that your organizations will be going through in post COVID-19 world. It is time to get off the sidelines.
