By Jondi Gumz
Small startup business owners are invited to apply for the California Dream Fund 11-week online training program at El Pajaro Community Development Center and become eligible to receive a $10,000 micro-grant.
A total of $1.7 million is to be distributed to small startups in Santa Cruz, Monterey and San Benito counties from the $35 million California Dream Fund.
El Pajaro CDC, a Women’s Business Center in Watsonville offering training, technical assistance, business incubator services and microloans, is partnering with the Santa Cruz Small Business Development Center and the Agriculture Land-based Training Association to offer the program, with training to start in June.
El Pájaro CDC is a nonprofit with the mission of promoting equal access to economic opportunity. English and Spanish business planning classes and business coaching are available to support entrepreneurs in the process to qualify for the California Dream program and apply for funding.
“We have all kinds of business, restaurants, catering, baker, radio station, a brewery, construction,” said Carmen Herrera-Mansir, executive director of El Pajaro CDC. “We currently have a Spanish class going on and the English class starts on March 22. We will be repeating the class several times during this year.”
ALBA is a nonprofit organic farm incubator and workforce training center in the Salinas Valley, creating economic opportunity in organic farm management for Mexican immigrants and other Latinos.
To participate, submit a request for services at www.elpajarocdc.org or call (831) 722-1224.
Several dozen spaces are available in the training cohort to start in June, according to Brandon Napoli, director of the Santa Cruz Small Business Development Center, based at Cabrillo College.
Online sales are up 9%, according to the Santa Cruz SBDC, citing data from the U.S. Department of Commerce comparing the second quarter of 2021 with that period in 2020.
To help aspiring entrepreneurs get started selling online, Santa Cruz County SBDC is launching Click 2 Bricks, a startup incubator and e-commerce hub emphasizing Latinx entrepreneurs in Santa Cruz and neighboring counties.
Click 2 Bricks will assist aspiring entrepreneurs and current business owners in starting, growing, and maintaining a best-practice, modern e-commerce website, along with business strategy.
Everything from initial pitch to product development, logistics, a launch checklist will be provided including co-working space and limited warehousing space on an as needed basis.
Startups that expect to sell via Shopify can expect to pay $79 a month for that software.
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To apply for the June training cohort, see https://clicks2bricks.org/pages/apply