Defining and Defying Barriers
As part of the initial stages of this program, Forward Cities sought out people and professionals within these communities to identify barriers that they face toward successful entrepreneurship. After a community survey, Forward Cities brought those individuals back into the process for idea sessions.
“We got them together and said, ‘here’s a barrier that the survey said. How do we address this?” Mohamed said. “One of them, for example, was awareness. People are not aware of existing support for entrepreneurs. How do you build out an ecosystem of entrepreneur resources when people don’t even know that they exist?”
After a brainstorming session, the groups narrowed down their ideas to four “MVS”s, Mohamed said, which stands for “minimal viable solutions.”
The first MVS is a community navigator—a case manager for entrepreneurs.
“One of the things we found was that there is an issue with cultural competence within entrepreneur-serving organizations. They aren’t understanding how to serve and market to minority communities, and there is lack of awareness of existing support,” Mohamed said.
The community navigator would be someone from the community who speaks the entrepreneur’s language and can explain the ecosystem of resources, while also helping them determine what resources to seek out based on the stage of their business.
“It’s hard to find your way into the right rooms,” Mohamed said, especially for those who already face so many barriers. “We are hoping that this navigator will be able to assist with that. It’s a simple solution that should make the ecosystem a little bit tighter.”
It’s important to note, Mohamed said, that community navigators are not new.
“Just people who are out there, giving their own time, helping business owners and aspiring business owners,” he said. “What we want to do is pay them, make sure they are supported and standardize the process.”
While the Forward Cities team is clear that this is what the community wants and that it is a good idea on paper, it still needs to see the effort at work.
“We are going to test it out, create the intake process and the training for navigators, get some people through the program and then see how it goes,” Mohamed said. “And if it goes well, we will expand, go into other communities and have more navigators.”
Part B of the navigator program includes “entrepreneurship hubs” that can serve as a meeting place in these target neighborhoods.
“We ideally want the navigators to meet people from the communities that they are in and not require people to go to the North Side if they are from the East End, for example,” Mohamed said. “Right now, we decided that the Homewood CEC is where one will be, and another one will be at Work Hard Pittsburgh in Allentown.”
To grow on the navigator option, Forward Cities is also trying to build an “Ecosystem Resource Platform,” which will serve as an online, one-stop-shop for entrepreneurial resources.
“It’s like the navigator, but online,” Mohamed said. “It will have a front end that you as an entrepreneur or aspiring entrepreneur can interface with and use to quickly find a resource.”
Not only will this become a directory of resources for communities, but it will also have a back-end that Forward Cities can use to track their case management. Navigators can use the system to track information on clients who come into the intake process and see where they are in the program.