federal funding going to minority women businesses nationwide

An El Paso program designed to help businesses owned by minority women to become more successful has received $400,000 from the Minority Business Development Agency.
The funding for the Minority Women’s Enterprise Diversity Center will help those qualified small businesses with financing, contracting, and exporting opportunities.
The center operates under the auspices of the El Paso Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and is the group’s third such technical assistance center in El Paso
The El Paso center is also tasked with providing advice and bi-lingual consultations to business start-ups.
The Commerce Department’s Minority Business Development Agency has helped secure some $4.6 billion in contracts for minority business in 2018. In so doing, says the agency, which was established by President Richard Nixon in 1969, it has created or retained more than 19,000 jobs.
The agency has also launched what it calls a Broad Agency Announcement that has awarded upwards of $13 million in grants in such areas as entrepreneurship, construction, space commerce, and aquaculture.
In December the agency awarded grants totaling nearly $2 million to four Historically Black Colleges and Universities for projects related to science, technology, engineering and mathematics entrepreneurship.

By Garry Boulard

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