CCWBE Report

It was another busy month in July for us at the Southeast Side business incubator. It was also a challenging one due to some factors that I will explain further. Let me go on by saying that despite the challenges, we forged on to advance the development of our current cooperative projects. We had scheduled OSHA training for all the co-ops, however, we had to cancel due to family emergencies that came up with the trainer. We will reschedule the sessions for early November. We are also getting ready to participate in the USFWC national conference that will take place in Chicago this year. All co-ops have confirmed their attendance. Amora Clean co-op - We created their Gmail; they created an agenda template for their general meetings and finished the startup budget draft. The logo has been a bit slow because the ladies have not yet found middle ground on what they like. I know they will reach a decision soon. I received some good news this month- Ana Guajardo Carrillo our ED - found a replacement to help me with the grant writing and reporting, the bad news is that she won’t start until after August 5th. Ana also has been out due to a new expansion program she’s working on and won’t be back until after August 5th. With that being said, I was asked to help out with some additional tasks while she’s gone, and the fact that I had already planned my vacation in the month of July, made it really hard for me to complete the reports on time. Other good news is that I finally found a part time admin manager to replace Karina's position, and the only caveat is, he won’t be able to start until after August 10th. Regardless of that, we are excited because he has experience in logistics which is going to help us tremendously with the transportation co-op., I am glad to have additional help so that I can finally concentrate on organizing the new co-op workshops that we have planned to start at the end of September. We met this month with the logistics co-op, and they finally decided on a name. They had originally thought about Blue Arrow, but we found quite a few logistics companies registered with that name. They decided to stay with the Red Arrow System. We also started working on their mission and vision statement. Karina will be working on a logo for them next. On the 19th of July, we held a co-op gathering to celebrate birthdays in July and to foster camaraderie between co-op members. I organized team building activities and we all prepared a favorite dish to share. I went on vacation the next day, which put a hold on most activities until my return on the week of the 29th. Las Visionarias took a family leave in the month of July due to personal reasons. We will restart the meetings with them in August.

There were too many events that required my physical participation, which placed a big constraint on finishing the reports on time. At the moment, we are also awaiting the response form the City on whether the budget revision was accepted or not. I have been trying to schedule a meeting (unsuccessfully) with Marielle, our former grants reporter, to give me training on how to submit vouchers since that was something I had not done.

The great news I received this month of July; my application for the Together Fund Small Business Community Advisors was accepted and I will be starting in September. I will have the opportunity to provide real-time community input and direction for the Steering Committee and staff to leverage the grantmaking, business practices, and policy levers for We Rise Together.

Yes

I had the opportunity to talk with Armando Robles from New Era Windows and invite him to a training I will be having in August with Red Arrow Systems Co-op.

Yes

All of them

On behalf of the Local co-op working group.

Yes

5 extremely useful