Dearborn Mayor Abdullah Hammoud (third from left) announced during his July 13 briefing to the City Council that the city will receive a $1 million grant in the fall to promote and support female entrepreneurs.
By SUE SUCHYTA
Times-Herald Newspapers
DEARBORN – The city secured a $1 million grant from the federal government, in partnership with a local non-profit, to help seed female entrepreneurship, Mayor Abdullah Hammoud announced July 13.
He said that while the parameters will be provided in August, the grant money will not be released until the fall.
Hammoud said the city is establishing a workforce development position, which the grant money will help fund.
He said the balance of the funds will go to the non-profit, which will assist with the programming and the seed funding.
“We’re actually going to give seed funding to women who want to start a business, but might not have the funding to do so,” Hammoud said. “They are working through the specifics of pulling that all together.”
He said the workforce development manager will get the program up and running and established, as well as some of the other workforce development programs that the city has under development.
“We are lucky that we are going to have this grant funding coming down,” Hammoud said. “We obviously have this (position) funded in the budget regardless, but the grant money will actually help us offset the general fund that was used to establish the position.”
The mayor said most cities have teams that focus on workforce development.
“For us, we have several pipelines under way,” he said. “We obviously have the Goggle certification and we are working with ACCESS on getting that up and running, and so that will be a classroom orientation setting, and the MyWorks program at ACCESS’s headquarters – we are training individuals to get Google certified under various IT certifications that they offer.”
Hammoud said the city is working with Henry Ford College and some employers to establish some other workforce pathways, such as a cyber-security pathway training program in Dearborn.
The mayor said the city’s strongest asset is to be the convener.
“For example, for this grant that we got with a non-profit, there are two options: Dearborn going it alone and providing the training to women entrepreneurs and giving them the understanding of how to overcome the barriers to start a company with the seed funding, or partner with a non-profit that has already been doing this, giving the pass-through to the money and having a partner from us to make sure that the coordination is happening,” Hammoud said.
The mayor said the city should focus on what it is good at – providing core city services – and have another entity perform the services for which the city does not have an established competency.