Investing in Refugee Entrepreneurs

Transcription

1 Investing in Refugee Entrepreneurs May 17, 2017 Hannah Carswell: Hi, everyone. I'm Hannah Carswell with Welcoming America. We really want to thank all of you for joining us today and also to thank the Office of Refugee Resettlement, whose support of the Welcoming Refugees Project has made today's webinar possible. I'd also like to thank Higher for partnering with us to put together this webinar on Investing in Refugee Entrepreneurs. I know that most of us in this field have seen incredible refugee entrepreneurship success stories over the years, and we know just how important it is to support refugee entrepreneurship and the difference it can make in the lives of refugees and also in our community. Today we'd like to give you a few more tools for thinking about how to support refugee entrepreneurs in your community through the work that you're already doing. By the end of the webinar we hope that you'll be able to communicate three ways that refugee entrepreneurs economically contribute to their communities, identify two ways that employment programs can support refugee entrepreneurs as part of their work, and articulate two concrete suggestions for ways that your organization can increase community awareness and support for refugee entrepreneurs. Let's take a quick look at our agenda. I'll open with an overview and some basic messaging that you can use to promote refugee entrepreneurship to the wider community. Then Nicole Redford, who is the program manager at Higher, will talk about how refugee entrepreneurship intersects with employment programs. Then we'll have Diego Abente, who is the vice president of economic

2 development at the International Institute of St. Louis, join us to talk about all of the ways that his organization supports refugee entrepreneurs and promotes their businesses to the wider community. He has some really great examples that I think you're all going to enjoy hearing. Then we'll have time for your questions. If you have questions that pop up as we go over the material, just type them in our chat box, so that we can answer them at the end of the webinar. We'll also be sending out the recording, slides, and resources once we finish. Although specific data on refugee entrepreneurs is difficult to find, we know that newcomers are more likely than US born residents to start businesses. We can take a look at the statistics we have around immigrant entrepreneurs and know that it includes the contributions of refugee entrepreneurs. Immigrant and refugee entrepreneurs make up 20% of the Main Street business owners. When we say Main Street businesses we're defining that as retail, food service, and accommodation, and neighborhood services, like nail salons, beauty shops, and gas stations. Immigrant and refugee entrepreneurs also employ 1 out of every 10 private sector employees, and they accounted for 48% of overall growth and business ownership and almost all growth in Main Street businesses in the 50 largest metro areas. This really adds up to a large impact on our economy, as well as a big impact on the way our communities look and the businesses and services that we all use. All of these statistics come from Welcoming America's Seeds of Growth Toolkit, which you can find on our website at welcomingrefugees.org. It has some more sources where you can find statistics like that to support your work. How can we support local refugee entrepreneurs? One of the first things we can do is start by being champions. This can be exposing existing Page 2 of 31

3 entrepreneurship, lending, and small business programs can untapped potential working with refugee entrepreneurs, so there may already be programs for entrepreneurs in your community, but they aren't serving refugees, because they don't know that there's a need or they don't know how to best serve refugees. By partnering with organizations that are already serving receiving community members or people who have been in the community for a longer time you're expanding services to a wider portion of the community and also avoiding resentment from senior community members, because services are available to everyone and people are getting to know each other through receiving these services. We know from the statistics we saw earlier that everyone, including receiving community members, are benefiting from the work of immigrant and refugee entrepreneurs. However, if community members feel like refugees are getting special, it may not feel that way to them, so that's one of the reasons it's really important to emphasize when we're championing refugee entrepreneurs, that when organizations and municipalities take steps to make it easier for refugees and immigrant entrepreneurs to get started on their businesses they're opening pathways for everyone. For instance, Chicago approached this issue and ended up lowering the number of permits required to open a business, which made it easier for everyone to open businesses. Being a champion for refugee entrepreneurs means having those kinds of conversation and making those connections with the people we're talking to. The next thing you can do is be a connector, which means we're developing a referrals system in which you're working with refugee entrepreneurs to connect them to the existing local resources. Filling program gaps is another thing that we can do, so when we see an unmet need or a challenge face our refugee entrepreneurs we can Page 3 of 31

4 recruit new service providers to cover that need, if we're not able to do it ourselves. Finally, it's just really important to make the work your own, so your approach to supporting refugee entrepreneurs has to be reflective of your community, its economy, the existing resources, and your capacity to either introduce new programming or improve what already exists. What works and really what's different from organization to organization and communities to community. Knowing the local context is vital. You can start by sharpening your grasp of the local economic priorities and refugee assets, so understanding both the mainstream economic priorities and the distinctive assets that your local refugee and immigrant community has can help you uncover business development priorities and the growth opportunities that can be integrated into your plan to support refugee entrepreneurs. You can also look for data that tells a story about refugees in your area. I know this can be difficult. It can be really hard to find data that's refugee specific. There are some suggestions in the Seeds of Growth Toolkit for [inaudible 00:06:46] data sources, and some communities have even been able to find funding to do economic studies that include information on entrepreneurship as well as other refugee economic impacts. In particular Cleveland in Central Ohio has done studies over the past few years, but you can also use data that talks about the wider immigrant community and know that refugee contributions are being counted in there. Also inventory and engage existing programs and potential partnerships. Limited resources for refugee entrepreneurship programs can be greatly leveraged by developing partnerships with local entrepreneur training programs, micro-lenders, incubators, mentors, and more to help promote a strong referral system that's connecting refugees to resources that already exist. Then it's just Page 4 of 31

5 really important to remember to talk with refugee entrepreneurs and make sure that we're actually helping the people that we want to be helping. We need to be directly engaging with them to understand their needs and what opportunities would be most helpful for them. This could be as simple as visiting them at their place of business or using a trusted community partner to convene refugee entrepreneurs and the people who serve them. It's also important to make sure that there are opportunities for refugee entrepreneurs to be involved in this work and be leaders in promoting their businesses. Communications is also a really important part of your strategy. It's important to communicate proactively and frequently about refugee entrepreneurs to get the word out to the wider community about their businesses and success stories. Another important thing is to be familiar with positive messaging themes around refugee entrepreneurs, and I'll go over a few of those in the next minute or so. Then finally you should be adapting the messaging themes to fit your community context. Like I said before, what works for one community may not work for another. I'll give you two messaging themes to think about when you're doing this work. The first is innovation. Refugees are innovators, entrepreneurs, and small business owners, whose contributions are helping us grow our local economy. Refugees bring new ideas and a willingness to work hard to see them succeed. They start businesses that bring jobs to our community, and that's good for all of us. We need to welcome everyone with ingenuity and innovative ideas to help us create a thriving economy. Here we're emphasizing the innovation of refugees and how that relates to our shared values and success as a community. Another theme that we can use is the twenty-first century economy. Page 5 of 31

6 Competing in a twenty-first century economy will require taking full advantage of our most important resource, our people. That means welcoming the new Americans who are starting businesses, committing to our community, and helping us build a stronger local economy. Working together to build a twenty-first century economy means making sure everyone who lives here feels welcome and included. In this one we're appealing, again, to the idea of shared success and how being welcoming is getting us there. These are themes that you can use in any of your communications around refugee entrepreneurs. The wording has been tested, and it works well in sharing how important the contributions of refugee entrepreneurs are to our communities, and you can always feel free to borrow the wording and shift it to fit your needs, whatever your needs may be, as you're communicating. This wraps up my overview of refugee entrepreneurship and messaging suggestions. I'm now going to hand it over to Nicole Redford, who is a program manager at Higher. We're thrilled to have her here and to have been able to partner with Higher. Nicole Redford: Thank you, Hannah. I'm really excited to be here today to talk about entrepreneurship and how it's a possible option for refugees within employment programs. Because I love working with refugees so much, I always like to start with an inspiring story. I have a story from the Innovation Campaign. Days after he and tens of thousands of other civilians fled the Democratic Republic of Congo earlier this month, Adam set up shop under a tree just inside of Uganda repairing cell phones and radios that his fellow refugees brought with them. He said, "I realized I was just sitting there doing nothing, and I realized I cannot live like this." Five years before, at the age of 30, he had broadened his skills by persuading a friend to teach him the art and science of electronic repairs. Today you can still find Adam Page 6 of 31

7 sitting beneath the tree working on his entrepreneurial activities, using his soldering iron, which heats on a bed of coal, and working his magic on the decrepit cell phones and radios that are a vital lifeline for the nearly 17,000 refugees just inside of Uganda. I like to listen to stories like this to learn more about all refugees who had experiences within their own country. Refugees often have had their own business, but face some serious barriers when they try to start one when arriving in the United States. Some potential entrepreneurs held professional positions in their home country and perhaps owned their own businesses. It may be difficult for them to join established business associations in the United States because of language and cultural barriers. Additional barriers to using credit in the US might prevent them from being able to access traditional means in order to get loans in order to start businesses in the US. Some of the common barriers that have been identified for refugees that are typical in the US are lack of capital, lack of credit history, lack of acceptable credit score, lack of American business experience and how the US markets work, and cultural and language barriers. Today I want to talk a little bit about why entrepreneurship is important and how it's really important to access a client's information about their background and their experiences from their own country and use that when trying to enroll them into employment programs. Especially these days when there are less new arrivals, it's really great to sit down and do a longer intake and to really find out what kind of path those refugees would like to pursue, so that they're doing more of a job upgrade experience in this country. First I want to talk about why entrepreneurship? Despite the difficulties that some refugees might have and the barriers that they Page 7 of 31

8 might bring into this country, a lot of them have a real passion for the work that they did. That might have been starting a business, and it might have just been in learning things, like Adam did, in order to help different populations. The pros that any entrepreneur can bring to this country is that it's a viable strategy towards self-sufficiency for refugees, so it's beyond those starter job. It's something much more, leading them to a much more fulfilling lifestyle. Refugee entrepreneurs who have been in the country for some time and have businesses often rise up and make great community leaders, inspiring others to take journeys like they did. Refugee entrepreneurs have led to the creation of more than 10,000 jobs, according to the Office of Refugee Resettlement. It offers refugees a greater sense of purpose and potentially higher salaries. Entrepreneurship also offers a more flexible work schedule, especially for those that are caregivers or those that might want to pursue some sort of part time education. One great resource to anyone who's thinking of starting this type of program for their clients is the Office of Refugee Resettlement's Micro-Enterprise Development Program. The main objective of this program is to assist refugees to become economical self-sufficient by starting a new business or expanding or sustaining a small business. The Micro-Enterprise Development Program is intended for recently arrived refugees, refugees who possess few personal assets, or those who lack credit history. All of these features are important towards getting access to traditional commercial lending dollars through banks or credit unions. It's intended for refugees who have been in the US for a number of years and wish to supplement their income from wages and salaries. Sorry. ORR started the Micro-Enterprise Development Program in 1991 to assist refugees to start their own businesses and to provide them with loans or funds in order to provide capital to start those business, as Page 8 of 31

9 well as technical assistance for the process. Currently this program has 22 grantees operating in 15 different states, and collectively they're funded around $4.5 million each year. The businesses that are created under this program amount to as many as 1,200 job opportunities each year, including those for business owners and families or other low income people, who might be able to access these jobs through these entrepreneurial businesses. A couple of facts from this program. During the last 19 years refugees have developed and expanded or maintained around 10,800 micro-businesses with a business survival rate of 88%. The loan repayment rate is nearly 98%, which is far higher than the average repayment rate in the industry, proving that refugees make great clients. Additionally, over the last 19 years ORR has seen over 24,000 refugees gain new entrepreneurial skills and knowledge. It's also led towards better jobs, helping refugee families achieve a better sense of economic self-sufficiency. In talking with those in lending I know these repayment rates are exemplary, so refugees are proven good customers in this type of program. The program is great for any organization that wants to start the process of beginning an entrepreneurship program, but ORR does offer two other programs that might help refugees who are wanting to start similar type businesses. The first is the Refugee Individual Development Account Program under ORR, which started in It's intended to fund projects to establish and manage IDAs for low income refugee participants. IDAs are leveraged or matched savings. Refugee eligible populations who enroll in this program can open their own savings account and have their assets matched through this program, $2,000 for an individual and $4,000 for a family. One of the things that a refugee can save towards under this program is money to set aside for their own personal business. Under the IDA Page 9 of 31

10 Program there are currently 20 grantees in 17 states funded at just over $5 million. This is a great way for refugees to accumulate assets that can eventually be leveraged money for their businesses. A third option is the ORR Refugee Family Childcare Micro- Enterprise Program. The refugees program here provides business opportunities to women in the market where there is a shortage of childcare providers. Through the grant mentors help refugee women establish agreements or contracts with state or county childcare officials, so they may qualify for state or county childcare reimbursements, and serve as childcare providers, and become successful, independent entrepreneurs. During the first year of the program the original 13 grantees collectively achieved the following results. They enrolled 879 refugee women in the program. They helped 172 refugees obtain business licenses. They assisted 160 refugees to start home daycare programs and created 1,061 childcare slots for children. This means that they helped 2,007 refugees find and secure their own jobs and took 79 refugee women off public assistance. Programs beyond ORR. The first program that I wanted to check out for everyone today was the Small Business Administration. It's their mission to aid, counsel, assist, and protect the interests of small business concerns to maintain and strengthen the overall economy of our nation. The SBA was created in 1953 as an independent agency of the federal government to help Americans start to build and grow businesses. Through an extensive network of field offices and partnerships with public and private organizations the SBA delivers its services to people throughout the US. As any of you might already know, starting a business involves a lot of planning, a lot of financial decision making, and completing a long Page 10 of 31

11 series of legal activities. Just to give you an idea of how hard it is to open a business, when I met with someone at the SBA they said across the United States there's over 652,000 different permits alone just to start a food truck business in the United States. That can be very difficult, and you can understand those barriers that refugees have might prevent them from being able to go through this process easily. The SBA has developed a 10 step list that's helpful for you and to help your clients plan and prepare if they are ready to open their own business. Here are the 10 steps. Step 1 is for them to write a business plan. Step 2 is to get business assistance and training. Take advantage of any free training or counseling services that might be available in your local community. Step 3, choose a business location. Get advice from your community members on where a customer friendly location is and where it would comply with zoning laws in the city. Step 4 is to finance your business. Find government backed loans, venture capital, or research grants on your own. Step 5, determine the legal structure of your business. Step 6, register your business name. To register your name with your state government you'll be able to get your state tax identification number as well as your federal tax identification number to operate as a business in this country. Step 7, register for state and local taxes. Step 8, obtain business licenses and permits. Step 9, sorry, understand employer responsibilities. What are those kinds of steps that you might need to know in order to take and hire employees? Step 10 is to find local assistance. Contact your local SBA Office to learn more about this process. They put this as step 10, but I would definitely flip that and put it as number 1. That's really important. This process is extremely difficult, and even native English speakers have a hard time going through this entire process. Page 11 of 31

12 The SBA has money that's dispersed through various entities, but it's more important that you and your clients know that there are many tools and resources that can be used throughout this process. I spoke to the local Baltimore office of the SBA. You guys can do the same in your community. They're very welcoming, and they have tons of resources. To access them just reach out via online, or they all have websites and phone numbers that you can call as well. Beyond the SBA, I continued to do some research in the Mid- Atlantic region of the United States to discover what other resources exist for clients. There are plenty of programs in operation, and in all of them you will... Not all of them are geared toward refugees, but they are funded to help any adult, and many of them are funded to help adults who do not speak English as their first language. I really suggest that you might want to do research as to what's going on in your local community already. What I found is there are a number of partners involved in this process that you would need to pursue in order to support your clients throughout this process. One of the programs that I met with was the ECDC Program called Enterprise Development. In 1992 they began a program under a grant from the Office or Refugee Resettlement, where they established micro-enterprise development programs to promote economic self-sufficiency by providing loans, technical assistance, and business counseling to refugees interested in and starting small businesses in the Washington DC metropolitan area. Since then they've grown their program to be able to disperse loans up to $35,000, and they now have over 4 different lending partners that provide those loans. The average size loans they say they provide to refugees are $11,000, and the repayment for these loans, refugees take on average one to three years to repay the loans, and the loans Page 12 of 31

13 are given at an 8.9% interest rate. The loan payment default rate is less then 10%. That was a really wonderful program that was really taking on the business of administering loans to clients. Since the inception they've been able to give out a ton of loans to refugees, but also other low income people in the metropolitan DC area. This was something that they really stressed that their expertise was really after the business loan had been built up, and they were going to help clients to find ways to get their businesses financed through the first three to five years. A second program that I explored was called The Welcoming Center for New Pennsylvanians, and it's funded by public and private funds. The Welcoming Center exists to help immigrants and US born businesses overcome barriers that they might face in this country. They said that Philadelphia was already home to 16,000 businesses and had a remarkable number of partners that were involved in the process. The Welcoming Center, since they started, was able to do research to say that of those 16,000 businesses, 50 to 70% were those that were immigrant owned and that immigrants are usually more likely to start businesses. This program began nine years ago in partnership with the Philadelphia Commerce Department, who funds all entrepreneurial activity across the city. Partners throughout this program meet throughout the year to discuss different parts of the entrepreneurial process. The Welcoming Center saw though that there was a gap in services to provide technical assistance to those seeking to open their own business. What this program does is they have a ESL For Entrepreneurs Course. It's a 6 week long course that refugees would have to take and pass in order to move to the next step, which is a 12 Page 13 of 31

14 week long Developing Your Business Plan. They also have a great part of their program where they match any of their refugee program participants with mentors in the field of the business that they're hoping to start. This program is able to serve 400 to 500 people each year. All they do is the technical assistance portion. They would refer clients out to receive loans from different programs. When I'm speaking to the head of the program there they said that the process for refugees can take anywhere from 9 months to 5 years, depending on the type of businesses that they want to open. Here's some typical requirements that programs have for refugees in order to become part of their entrepreneurial process. Just a good understanding of English, good credit or cosigner, some sort of savings, a steady employment, a business plan, and the knowledge of how to implement that plan step by step, know how much money that they're requiring in order to start their business, copies of their tax returns, good standing in community, clean background, and possibly an application fee in order to cover the cost of a credit check. If you're sitting with your clients and you're enrolling them into these programs, I definitely suggest doing a personal budgeting plan with them each month to make sure that they're able to cover the expenses of going into this type of process, which can take a good amount of time. When I was speaking to the different programs the favorite thing that I liked to ask were, "What were the top five businesses that refugees liked to open?" This is Roman at the top of this picture here, and these are the top five businesses that clients are opening at ECDC. Uber and Lyft, he said those are the easiest ones in this type of economy these days. Trucking, like the CDL licenses. Convenience stores, restaurants, and spa services, and spa services like massages, hair braiding. At other programs they had refugees that were doing Page 14 of 31

15 nails for spa services. They also had commercial cleaning businesses being opened. Then a lot of them mentioned that they were opening home childcare businesses for up to six kids, which I thought was a great part of the program and very empowering to the women participants in the program. I also wanted to get the advice from the experts in these programs that are already in operation, and so here's some of the advice that they wanted to pass on to you, if you're working with refugee clients, to give them this information, but also a little bit of information about those of you who might want to start opening a program. What they said is that the most successful refugee clients that were entering these programs had been in the United States already for two to three years. It takes on average three to five years after starting a business for their business to become successful, where they're able to turn profit. They wanted to suggest to refugees who want to open a business that they might want to work in that industry before they work on a business plan. They said refugees who wanted to explore the field of a business they're opening definitely had more experience of knowing what kind of permits were needed or what kind of steps were needed after they had worked in that particular industry. That last advice is from the experts just saying for those of you who want to possibly open this type of program, you want to strike a balance between your mission and the sustainability of this type of program. Neither one of you, you or the client, will be able to take shortcuts. It's a long process, and it involves a lot of partnerships. You'll need a lot of strength and stamina for the process. It'll take a long time and require hard work. What I've learned through this whole process is that doing research there's a lot of things that are already available in communities to entrepreneurs, so please first check with your local Small Business Administration, your Business Page 15 of 31

16 Association, or your Chamber of Commerce. Also, I would say maybe try working with a few refugee entrepreneurs and see how difficult the process is. Now I'm going to turn it over to one of those experts. Diego? Diego Abente: Hey. Can you guys hear me? Hannah Carswell: Diego Abente: Yes. We can hear you loud and clear. Hello? Okay. Good. I guess it's good afternoon in St. Louis to everybody. Got a great group here. I was excited to hear everything you guys presented. It's no more than what we know to be true in the space that we work in. Before I get to the slides, I really just wanted to kind of summarize everything that you guys had talked about by sharing the following. We are a grantee of the Office of Refugee Resettlement's Micro-Enterprise Development Grant. We have been since 1999, so we're a part of that group of 20 odd grantees. I would be happy to speak with you guys offline and individually about what that program is like. We have received off and on every year sort of the IDA Grant, so I have some fairly good expertise on that and also we'd love to share what we learned around that. We were, at the very beginning of the childcare program, a grantee of that as well, so I've got some experience that I can pass along to folks who might be interested in doing that in their particular locals. I will say that the RSC, the childcare program, is probably the most particular and the on you really want to think about the most before you apply, because there are, depending on your locality, very, very different barriers to entry to those businesses. I will say the following. Folks who are in Philly were just visiting here in St. Louis yesterday related to the organization that you guys mentioned before, just kind of sharing what they were doing and learning about what we were Page 16 of 31

17 doing, and it was incredible. These organizations that have known about each other for several years now, and we still every time we meet have the occasion to really learn from each other and kind of pass on, back and forth, best practices. All of this just to say to you guys that the community around immigrant and refugee lending is pretty tight knit, and that's a great thing, because it provides a lot of free expertise, experts experience, best practices to help you understand how to make it work in your community, and this is something that we believe is completely additive. There is definitely more than enough room for all of us to be doing this great work, and obviously our end users, our clients, deserve every opportunity to succeed. We would love for organizations to be helping them across the United States. Feel free to reach out. I'm sure Hannah will let folks know what my contact details are, so you can, if you've got any particular questions on those programs that were mentioned. But onto the slides. The International Institute has been doing refugee resettlement for over 100 years and has been involved in economic development space, under which we do our refugee and immigrant work, entrepreneurship work, for about probably 20 years now, 10 really in earnest. In a way we're a little bit new to the market, but we've been doing this for enough years where we feel like we've hit our heads against the wall several times and have some great lessons that we can pass on. I think the first thing in terms of communicating the message about what you're doing is really asking yourself about where the starting point is in terms of the folks that you're serving, and that might sound a little bit obvious, but I think a lot of times, especially in nonprofits, we're so busy with our day to day that we don't have the time and sort of the head space to step back and ask ourselves these sort of bigger questions that will provide Page 17 of 31

18 direction and alignment of what we're doing. What we've done in the institute or at the institute over the past several years is really started to fine tune our mission alignment between the resettlement portion of what our organization does and the economic development and really trying to craft a mission that speaks to both of those pieces at the same time. The example concretely is that the institute works to make the refugees that we resettle here in the St. Louis area positive members of our community. Through that work we want to elevate, communicate, celebrate the importance of their cultural and financial contributions. We include the financial contribution there as a sort of lead in to the economic development work. On my side when I speak about more particularly the economic development activity that we do I will continue and add on that what we're trying to do within economic development is foster a community with very involved immigrant and refugee businesses. Why do we want to do that? That's the question that people are asking themselves in the back of their minds as you're speaking to them. Well, we want to do that for two very simple reasons. The first is we want to increase the number of immigrant owned businesses in our region. Why? That steps back into the sort of larger mission, which is to recognize the cultural and the financial value of a diverse population, both in its citizenry, but also in terms of the businesses that are present in the community. The second is to help make every single one of the folks that we work with [inaudible 00:37:56]. That really is our hook to folks in the private sector. Right? Because that's really what they want to kind of understand. What is your place in this larger puzzle, and how does the work that you guys do tie into the things that I do, and why should I care? Why is this important to me? You automatically hook them. Page 18 of 31

19 You say, "Look. What we're doing here is we're accelerating this walk that refugees and immigrants have to do to get into mainstream banking, to become users of the products or the services that you're providing or the widgets that you want to sell depending on who your audience is." I think it's really important, again, to align the mission, make sure that you're communicating something that's simple, but powerful, and that includes some language that will open windows or doors to the partners and the community that you want to reach out to. That kind of steps back to one of the former slides on knowing the context of your local community, and understanding who the players on that landscape that you want to influence are, and making sure that, again, as you craft this message you're making sure to use some words in there that will sort of heighten their senses and help them pay a little bit more attention to what you're trying to communicate. That's starting at the beginning. When we interact with folks we're starting to talk to them from the very beginning, our clients, these refugees and immigrants. We're trying to tell them that, "Look. What you have done with your life is by definition entrepreneurial. You have left everything behind. You have overcome insurmountable challenges, and you're here kind of rebuilding your life. That in a way is the most powerful entrepreneurial story that can be told. Now, it's your choice to decide how you want to continue with that, if you want to express that through, you know, obtaining a great job and providing for your family or yourself, of if you've got some ideas, or some experience, or now want to take advantage of the opportunity that you have here in the United States to start your own business. Part of this is at the very beginning we sit them down, pen to paper, with what we call our pathways and our roadmaps, so that they can see, even though they're not going to access those services from day Page 19 of 31

20 one, they can kind of see visually in front of them what's in store, what's available, what they can aspire to. I think that's really important, because they've come from a place of a lot of uncertainty, of a lot of changing I guess changing [inaudible 00:40:28] them that there's a process, and there are some milestones that they can look forward to, but also we want to inspire them to start thinking about where they want to be, you know, 12, 24, 36 months down the line. I think, to Nicole's point, we also have seen in our practice that folks that have been here for two to three years are those that are in the best place to start a business. Of course we don't want to wait for those two to three years to kind of go by before engaging them around entrepreneurship. We want to make sure that from day one they know that that's an opportunity and that they know when they're ready they can come see us about that, and we can help them realize their dreams, if you will. That's sort of the first bullet point around starting at the beginning. I think the second thing is really thinking about how you deliver the services and products that you think are going to, if you will, accelerate these folks into mainstream services, whether that be financial or other. We have tried to, along with our resettlement agency, sort of our parents agency's mission and sort of delivery package, we've tried to really make everything [inaudible 00:41:38] quite nicely and be very cohesive. Our mission aligns to the International Institute's mission, which is our parent, but then our service delivery model also ties in very nicely with the service delivery model of the parent, again. This simplifies the message for all of our partners. It also simplifies the message for our clients. Right? We have a very simple model of the 3 D approach. Right? We provide the dollars, the development services, and the ID. The dollars Page 20 of 31

21 is pretty simple. This is the capital that these folks need to start or strengthen their business. It's something that they can't access through banks, for the reasons that Nicole mentioned, but I think another thing that you could say here as you're reaching out to financial partners is also they don't have the networks that other folks have in the United States because they've grown up here, and they've got family and friends that can help them as they start their businesses. It's important for them to know that organizations like ours or possibly yours are their only alternative, and it's important for them to be there and provide that for them. The development services, and Nicole touched on it a little bit, it's just helping them understand how to succeed as entrepreneurs in the United States, which is sometimes very different from what success looks like in countries that they came from, and so in a way they've got to take their experiences and understand how to transform them, and transition them, or to use the trendy word, pivot them into what will be success in the United States. Finally, and here again, here comes our hook. When we reach out to partners and we try to elevate our awareness and our message about why this is important to folks who aren't as naturally passionate about it as everybody here on the phone today. The ID. We are helping them develop a portfolio or an identity that will allow them to walk into a financial institution or a more large scale business development organization and present themselves on an equal playing field. I think when you start to communicate those messages, again, people who are working in different spaces kind of find a bridge between what we're doing and what they're doing, and that helps them hear the message, digest the message, and understand how to meet us in the middle, not only in terms of understanding and being aware of what we're doing, and being able to communicate that through their Page 21 of 31

22 networks, but also figuring out how they can help. They might surprise us and be able to help in ways that we didn't think that would be possible. I want to just kind of tie this back to the institute's massage of service delivery model. We have the 3 Ds, the dollars, the development, the ID. The institute has the three pillars, immersion, investment, and inclusion. Every time I present this, and I'm trying to get the rest of the staff to do this as well, I like to also mention the community. These three pillars, these three Ds cannot exist in a vacuum. What we do is additive. It's added value to a community, and the community has to understand and has to appreciate that, but we also have to give thanks. None of the work that we do is sustainable in a vacuum. It really is necessary to have... I try not to use the word buy in, because it sounds sort of one and done, but engagement, a continuous partnership and collaboration among the community. I think communicating in this way is a very powerful way to kind of elevate the message that we want to make sure that people are getting. It helps us stay front of mind for folks. In our experience that's been sometimes very difficult. You know, you'll hold an event. It'll be large scale. It'll be a massive success. Folks will be really happy with it. Two months down the road they've forgotten about it, because something else has come up, or another event has been held. For us it's really important to maintain that engagement and stay front of their minds. That's what we try to do as we craft our message and think of words and ways to elevate that and to make sure that they're thinking about us more than on... Sorry, guys. My computer just... There we go. It almost crashed. They think about us more continuously. I'm going to try to... There we go.... move forward one and show you Page 22 of 31

23 some of the examples of how we do this. We talk a little bit about using sort of building blocks or thinking about the honeycombs and connecting pieces that together kind of build out to something stronger and bigger than they would be able to be on their own. For example, the institute has held for many years now a Festival of Nations we call it. It's an outdoor festival. It's grown, and it's become extremely popular. 150,000 folks over a weekend will attend the festival. We try very hard to communicate our message throughout the festival and everything we do. We've got 40 different food booths, ethnic food booths, and every one of them has a message there about the importance of what they provide to the community and how the institute fits into that value chain. We have craft booths, about 40 to 50 of those as well. Again, there are messages there to reinforce to everybody who is enjoying the festival that this ties into the bigger picture and this has value in your every day life, not just on the particular weekend that we're holding the festival. That became so popular in fact that we had trouble fitting in all of the immigrant entrepreneurs that wanted to provide food, or crafts, or participate in the festival in one way, shape, or form, so we leveraged that, and we created what we now call the Holiday Bazaar, which is in the winter, and it's indoor, and it's a little bit more small scale, but it allows folks that couldn't get into the Festival of Nations an opportunity to test out what it feels like to present at a festival like this, to understand what supports they can get from us, and to be exposed to the community, to see if what their presenting or what they're selling is something that resonates with the community. Again, there we're reinforcing the message about the value that these refugee and immigrant businesses bring to our community, how it makes in our case, St. Louis, a Mid-West city, really feel quite international, something that a lot of folks who come visit here are surprised to feel. Page 23 of 31

24 We also have spaces up at the top left here for more formal sort of academic conversations that share... I love these widgets, so I'm going to highlight that.... to share some more timely research information. This is an opportunity to talk about the numbers a little bit more than the stories. I like that both Hannah and Nicole talked about both stories and numbers. I think one of the things that we have to really, really be careful about is not going overboard on the numbers, and I'm a numbers guy, so that happens to be my particular weak spot, if you will. We have to really balance out that part of our conversations and our message, along with the stories, because to Nicole's point, it's really powerful when you tell a story, and folks remember that. Bagels and coffee is an opportunity to focus on the numbers. It's early in the morning, so folks don't have to miss work or plan to be home late, but it also allows them to prepare to receive some deeper insights into affecting refugee and immigrant resettlement, what's affecting refugee and immigrant businesses, and where we want to go in terms of that activity here in St. Louis. That was such a success that we had volunteers come up and ask, "Well, how can we replicate what you're doing and tell the story of what the institute and the Economic Development Department are doing for St. Louis?" We thought about it a lot, and we figured, okay, we would really, really as a nonprofit love to have this additional resource, which is relatively low cost, but we want to make sure that the product that we're delivering is one that we can put our brand to, one that really communicates the message, because we've spent so much time developing our message, so we developed this Speakers Bureau, which is nothing more than a sort of train the trainer workshop, where volunteers from the community can come in. They spend a Page 24 of 31

25 day with us. We share our mission, our vision. We talk to them about a lot of the stuff that I'm talking to you about today, and we empower them to go out in their communities, however big or small, however close or far, to retell the story. Every time they tell it they're going to share some numbers, and they will tell a success story, and they will talk about refugee resettlement in general, but they will also talk about their value to the financial and cultural wellbeing of our community. We're replicating this message, again, at a relatively low cost. I'm being told to hurry up, so I will. I'm just going to... One other thing that we've done that's really I the think interesting that you guys might think about, if you've been working with refugee communities for a long time, what we did, we celebrated our 97th birthday as an organization not too long ago. We decided we wanted to do something different. I'll finish with this last one, because this is something exciting that I think hasn't been done too often before, in as much as I've heard. 97th birthday, we're celebrating it. We want to do something different, not just the sort of [inaudible 00:50:49] and read off some of our latest numbers and all of our accomplishments. We did an immersion activity or an experiential activity, where we asked folks to sort of walk the refugee walk. This was extremely elaborate. We put up refugee camps. We had projectors showing some of the camps across the world. You know, we made them take that long walk, which represented their travels from wherever they might be to the United States. We sat them down for instead of English classes, it happened to be Arabic classes, because not a lot of folks who showed up knew Arabic. We kind of made them feel like a refugee might feel first arriving here, being talked to in a language that they're not familiar with. It was just a resounding success. Folks Page 25 of 31

26 that had been advocates of our work for decades, they still just enjoyed it too. What we're trying to do with that now is really leverage that success and take this experiential model or this immersion model into schools, so that we can reach out to the young folks in our communities, out to corporations, and maybe we'll condense it when we do that, so that folks who have to work in a multicultural setting or who want to understand better how to participate in our society and just be more involved with the immigrant communicate can get a feel for what it's like, for where these people come from, because not every refugee, not every immigrant is comfortable sharing their story and sort of reliving those difficult times in their lives. Through this experience we really hope to leave them with a feeling, not just a message, but a feeling. You know, I'm hopeful that that's going to have a transformative effect on our community and really bringing in a whole new pool of advocates, volunteers, and folks who are actively engaging with our organization and elevating our message. I think I'll end it there, Hannah, because I'm probably five or so minutes over time, but happy to take questions if you guys see anything on here that you might want to ask about. Hannah Carswell: Diego Abente: Okay. Thank you both, Nicole and Diego. That was really great. I already got a few questions from people, so if you have questions, just chat them in the chat box, and we'll try to get to them. The first question I got is, "Do you have any tips on finding refugee entrepreneurs to chat with and learn from in our respective communities?" Maybe I'll start with Diego. I would ask the question what community are you in? What we have done in St. Louis, with the communities that we're not naturally Page 26 of 31

27 connecting to, is we've gone out to look for... Okay. I see Long Beach, California. Check and see if you've got some Ethnic Chambers of Commerce. That's probably a pretty low hanging fruit in terms of finding them. They'll have a web presence. You know, they'll be easy to contact, and they might be able to connect you to their membership or at least direct you to sort of the commercial corridor where a lot of their members are. Then you would just get out there and, for example, go for Mexican dinner, and talk to the folks there, and try to do some investigative work. Hannah Carswell: Diego Abente: Okay. Another question that we have is, "For people who already have businesses, like hair salons or nail salons, how would they use their story to promote themselves?" Whoever feels like they have something to share. I can start and Nicole, you can jump in if you'd like. It kind of depends on where they want to go with their story. I think, going back to my first point about starting at the beginning, what do you want to communicate with your message about what you do, or where you come from, or what you've accomplished? I'll give you a really cool example from St. Louis. We had a lady get a loan from us to start a hair braiding service. She's from the African Community. I think she's Congolese. Of course she was servicing a lot of folks from that community, and she found that there was a great need for additional supports within that community. They weren't making it to our organization, the International Institute, to get these service, and so she leveraged her business success to create sort of a peer group of women, a learning group, if you will, a support group. We helped her kind of craft the message and set up her social media profile, if you will, and connect with these ladies. We provided her some curriculums as well, so that she could... In a way we trained the Page 27 of 31