As one of the main drivers of the nation’s economic development in most of the 20th century, Detroit fell into an economic decline that challenged the city with distress, poverty, and unemployment. Even though some people think Detroit had lost its glory, many Detroiters have been striving to rebuild and revitalize the city through entrepreneurial ideas and social innovation. ProsperUS Detroit, a program of Southwest Economic Solutions that I am working for this summer, is one of the powerful contributors to Detroit’s economic development through empowering social entrepreneurship.
ProsperUS Detroit carries a mission to transform low-income neighborhoods in Detroit by providing opportunities for individuals and families to achieve greater economic success. It seeks to support low and moderate income, immigrant and minority entrepreneurs through entrepreneurial training, business services, and micro-lending. This summer, Blake and I are working on projects in all three pillars of ProsperUS’s services, which give us opportunities to work with employees in different groups in ProsperUS and comprehensively learn about and integrate into the organization. One of our projects is called Storytelling, for which we seek out to entrepreneurs connected to ProsperUS for a conversational interview, in order to learn about their business and entrepreneurial experience and expertise, as well as ProsperUS’s impact on their path. We will write short articles about them after we gather information and insights from the interviews, and post them on the ProsperUS website and social media, to raise awareness for entrepreneurial approach and spirit in the community and inspire others, especially low income and minority individuals, to take entrepreneurial actions. In addition to the Storytelling project, we are also working on a project for which we create templates for both a business plan and a cash flow statement that can be used during entrepreneurial training in the future. Our goal for the project is to create additional resources for the training curriculum and to share the information that the business services team and the micro-lending team look for when our program graduates apply for other types of assistance with ProsperUS. When it comes to constructing a business plan and filling out financials information for a business, students of the program often struggle with making an effort to get started, accounting for all kinds of costs associated with the business’s operation, and conducting market research. We aim to create templates that include clear and specific instructions on how to complete each part of a business plan and a cash flow statement form, multiple and specific categories of costs that will help entrepreneurs to take different types of costs into account and document them correctly, and a comprehensive section of market, competition, and risks that will drive entrepreneurs to research about the market more effectively. Besides Storytelling and Templates Creation, we were working on and finished a number of other projects. We created an Intake Form for all business services applicants to fill out before they can receive official assistance from ProsperUS. The form makes the process of reviewing applicants more efficient and directly provides applicants with crucial resources. We also updated the In-Business Map and Lending Map with related information of our clients in the recent two years, in order to achieve a more accurate presentation of ProsperUS’s impact in the community geographically and a more efficient and effective promotion of the businesses supported by ProsperUS. Last but not least, we developed Excel formulas that automatically add data to the gender category and the race/ethnicity category, which accelerate the process of recording clients’ data and foster awareness of and discussion on supporting more woman-owned and minority-owned businesses. I believe that what we do everyday is supporting the entrepreneurial spirit and small business community in Detroit, and that such effort altogether with Detroiters’ innovative endeavors can revitalize and transform the city.
ProsperUS Detroit carries a mission to transform low-income neighborhoods in Detroit by providing opportunities for individuals and families to achieve greater economic success. It seeks to support low and moderate income, immigrant and minority entrepreneurs through entrepreneurial training, business services, and micro-lending. This summer, Blake and I are working on projects in all three pillars of ProsperUS’s services, which give us opportunities to work with employees in different groups in ProsperUS and comprehensively learn about and integrate into the organization. One of our projects is called Storytelling, for which we seek out to entrepreneurs connected to ProsperUS for a conversational interview, in order to learn about their business and entrepreneurial experience and expertise, as well as ProsperUS’s impact on their path. We will write short articles about them after we gather information and insights from the interviews, and post them on the ProsperUS website and social media, to raise awareness for entrepreneurial approach and spirit in the community and inspire others, especially low income and minority individuals, to take entrepreneurial actions. In addition to the Storytelling project, we are also working on a project for which we create templates for both a business plan and a cash flow statement that can be used during entrepreneurial training in the future. Our goal for the project is to create additional resources for the training curriculum and to share the information that the business services team and the micro-lending team look for when our program graduates apply for other types of assistance with ProsperUS. When it comes to constructing a business plan and filling out financials information for a business, students of the program often struggle with making an effort to get started, accounting for all kinds of costs associated with the business’s operation, and conducting market research. We aim to create templates that include clear and specific instructions on how to complete each part of a business plan and a cash flow statement form, multiple and specific categories of costs that will help entrepreneurs to take different types of costs into account and document them correctly, and a comprehensive section of market, competition, and risks that will drive entrepreneurs to research about the market more effectively. Besides Storytelling and Templates Creation, we were working on and finished a number of other projects. We created an Intake Form for all business services applicants to fill out before they can receive official assistance from ProsperUS. The form makes the process of reviewing applicants more efficient and directly provides applicants with crucial resources. We also updated the In-Business Map and Lending Map with related information of our clients in the recent two years, in order to achieve a more accurate presentation of ProsperUS’s impact in the community geographically and a more efficient and effective promotion of the businesses supported by ProsperUS. Last but not least, we developed Excel formulas that automatically add data to the gender category and the race/ethnicity category, which accelerate the process of recording clients’ data and foster awareness of and discussion on supporting more woman-owned and minority-owned businesses. I believe that what we do everyday is supporting the entrepreneurial spirit and small business community in Detroit, and that such effort altogether with Detroiters’ innovative endeavors can revitalize and transform the city.
View of Detroit from the Riverfront Conservancy building
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