First Workshop July 19th!

It's been about two weeks since my last entry so there are quite a lot of things to write about.

As I mentioned in the last entry, I have really been forced to take a hard look at my project and ensure that it is both do-able and research focussed. Having begun to figure things out over the past few weeks the curriculum and logistics of the workshops have begun to fall into place. Entering the summer, I really had two goals for my project: one was to continue to explore the idea of whether or not a series of small business workshops increased success (loan repayment, business longevity) of a micro-enterprise loan, the other was to research how the plethora of existing small business workshop material in english needs to be adapted to be relevant to the Latino community. What I've realized is that for the summer at least, the second question is the most feasible one to focus on. The first question is more long-term and would really require a tested and solidified workshop curriculum in order to be answered.

With this in mind, the small business workshops this summer are primarily designed around piloting the trainings we have developed while obtaining as much feedback as possible so we can hopefully turn the pilot into something that is useful and relevant to the Chapel Hill Latino community.

Right now, we have two workshops ready to pilot. The first focuses on "Defining your Business" and provides several examples of successful micro-enterprises to help participants find and develop business ideas. With a general idea of your desired business developed in the first workshop, the second workshop talks about the importance of understanding your business' customers and competition. As mentioned earlier, this material will also be accompanied by a system to try and gain valuable feedback as well as test the usefulness of the workshops. This will include several questions before the beginning of the first workshop, designated space in each workshop handout for comments/suggestions/criticisms, and a focus group after the second workshop. If all goes well and it seems manageable, we will continue with the remaining workshops on Marketing, Pricing, and Legal issues.

Along with a solidification of the workshop model, we have also set the date for the first workshop! The training on "Defining your Business" is going to be on Monday, July 19th from 6:30-8:30 in the Abbey Court Human Rights Center. We've been doing outreach at the center's various programs over the past week so hopefully we will have to 7 or so participants we've been looking for.

This next week looks to be a pretty busy one for the project so I'm sure I'll have to plenty to say next Sunday.

Thanks for reading!

-Ben