Las Cruces, New Mexico

and e-commerce, which is something that local businesses may not necessarily have as a focal point unless they’re forced to do that,” she explains. “The current pandemic situation is an opportunity for those entrepreneurs to adapt to the new market opportunities. Hopefully, we’ll have a lot of successes from that, where they’ll expand into new markets, remain open, and keep their workforce employed.” “We are also launching a program in mid- August for business assistance,” she adds. “We have partnered with a community development financial institution called LiftFund. They are going to provide technical assistance to local businesses with a lot of financial education: accounting, marketing, e-commerce, etc. They are also going to deploy up to half a million dollars in loans to participants, plus additional funding available for business support through federal funds. We see that as a very key component to filling in access to capital in our community in the form of micro-loans. The goal is for those businesses to be loan-ready with the knowledge to be successful and be able to pay back. Based on the metrics that they capture, they have about a 93-percent repayment rate. That’s a really high number. Also, their customers are usually not bankable through the traditional financial institutions. So, that’s a really exciting component to it”. “For business support strategy, we are partnering with Doña Ana Community College’s Career Development Services, the Workforce Connections team here in town, as well as a number of non-profit organizations to jointly put together a program and pursue grant funds through the Economic Development Administration CARES Act. We are aiming to cover the component of job seekers who were most vulnerable and have furloughed or laid off, and very likely, need to be retrained in order to access any new opportunities. We are going to focus on the top industries that we have targeted.”