Yvette Walker
With 91.9 KVCR News, I'm Yvette Walker. This is IE Latino Voices, where we invite representatives from Latino led and Latino serving organizations to share their stories and their impact in our region. Today, we've invited Monica Robles of Asociacion de Emprendedores to join us. Thank you so much for being with us today. Monica.
Monica Robles
Thank you for the invitation. I'm very, very happy and excited about having this conversation.
Yvette
Please share what inspired you to launch and become founder of Asociacion de Emprendedores.
Monica
Of course. We started by creating the curriculum of the Emprendedores program back in 2016, to support women that have suffered domestic violence, and they needed a way to get away from the abuser. And that was at the request of the Mexican Consulate because I was a volunteer providing leadership awareness training for the Hispanic community. And so, I created the curriculum. And when I was working on that, and knowing who was going to be my audience, I thought, “How am I going to convey something that it could be quite difficult to achieve, to make it easy and empower them to tell them that they can do this?” And so I created the curriculum. And I started teaching the program at the Mexican Consulate. That was in Santa Ana, and then in San Bernardino and other areas. And then the people that was taking, the participants, mostly woman, they were like, “We don't want to finish the program. We're receiving so much information, so beneficial.” And I said, we need them to graduate, we need to move forward. And because of the demand that I saw from them, that they needed to learn more about business, they needed to learn more about themselves. That's when I saw the need to create a nonprofit organization, which is Asociacion de Emprendedores in 2018 to provide those free services. I committed myself to bring those services for free. And I needed, you know, a vehicle to do it. Even though I didn't know what a nonprofit was. I had to certify myself with the IRS to understand the responsibilities and the legal requirements and everything and started from scratch, from love, meaning no money whatsoever, but the desire to support my community. And the mission of organization is to educate, motivate, empower and develop the leadership skills and business acumen of the monolingual Hispanic community in the United States. That way we can, we can help them be part of the economic development, development of their cities, counties, the state and of course, the federal government. But the main pillars of the Emprendedores program is empowerment of the individual, the development of the leadership skills and the technical assistance, which is knowing how to start a business from scratch, and complying with the legal requirements that are in the government agencies. And so, in order to become an entrepreneur, it's important that the person knows themselves first. We start with who's the individual, where is the individual right now, and then go from there. We create a SWOT; the strengths opportunity threats and and weakness, you know, of the individual. And then we get to know where they are and then we move forward.
Yvette
Absolutely inspiring. Monica, please tell us how the community can connect with you and learn more.
Monica
We have our website which is www.asociaciondeemprendedores.org. And they can also find us here in the city of San Bernardino. We have an office here in Hospitality: 473 E. Carnegie Drive, and our phone number is 714-640-6908
Yvette Walker
Perfect. Join us again next week for IE Latino Voices. You can find this story and others on our website at kvcrnews.org/ielatinovoices. IE Latino Voices is produced by KVCR Public Media and is funded by generous support from the CIELO fund at IECF, uplifting and investing in the IE’s Latino community. For KVCR News, I'm Yvette Walker.