Small minority-owned businesses in Baltimore and elsewhere that struggle to access financing could get help through a new public-private federal partnership announced Monday in East Baltimore.
Officials with the U.S. Department of Commerce finalized a national agreement with St. Louis-based nonprofit Urban Strategies Inc. to bring resources such as access to capital and technical support to minority-owned businesses in Baltimore and about two dozen other metro areas.
Those are “all the things that minority-owned businesses have had challenges with in the past,” said Esther Shin, Urban Strategies’ president, during an event at Perkins Square, the city’s former Perkins Homes public housing that’s being redeveloped as mixed-income housing, and where the nonprofit is working with residents. “The partnership is really an effort to remove those barriers.”
Urban Strategies has a designation as a community development financial institution, allowing it to offer financial services in low-wealth communities and to people who lack access to financing.
Click here to read the rest of the article written by Lorraine Mirabella over at The Baltimore Sun
