Q&A
SBS's outreach efforts to smaller organizations and immigrant communities
0:57:32
·
116 sec
Council Member Feliz inquires about SBS's outreach efforts to reach smaller, more informal networks and organizations. SBS representatives explain their focus on reaching immigrant communities and supporting smaller organizations.
- SBS has been focusing on reaching immigrant communities through extensive outreach and community roundtables
- The Merchant Organizing Grant program has been launched to support the creation of merchant associations
- SBS encourages larger, well-resourced organizations to collaborate with smaller, limited-capacity organizations in neighborhoods
Oswald Feliz
0:57:32
Okay.
0:57:32
Very good.
0:57:33
Okay.
0:57:34
So I guess now I wanna ask a few questions about collaborating with the big organizations, but also with the doing outreach to the small organizations.
0:57:41
SBS often partners with 4 organizations, including local bids, merchant associations.
0:57:46
But just curious, what kind of outreach efforts does SBS undertake to reach smaller, I guess, more informal networks than organizations?
Haris Khan
0:57:55
Thank you.
0:57:56
Thank you, Jeff, for these Over the past two and a half years in this administration, there's been a tremendous focus on reaching immigrant communities all over the city, and we've done that through extensive outreach, organizing community round tables, quarterbacks, across the 5 boroughs, and particularly in launching the merchant organizing grant that you've heard about and have heard us speak about.
0:58:16
We've gotten funding for the past 3 years under this administration.
0:58:20
This funding never existed before.
0:58:21
And over the past 3 years, this funding was used to unleash the creation of merchant associations all over the city.
0:58:29
And and that helps in make making building or organizational capacity along commercial corridors and can be a first step to maybe future bids even down the line.
0:58:38
So that's the type of commitment that the administration and our agency has shown on this particular issue.
0:58:44
And so we do outreach on our all of our services, our business services, our workforce services, but then we're also investing heavily merchant organizing so that local merchants themselves can chart a future for their quarters together.
Calvin Brown
0:58:57
And and oftentimes, we, you know, we we have our use usual suspects, right, those who are aware of when we launch our grants.
0:59:05
How to, you know, submit a proper application.
0:59:08
But what we do is we encourage those larger, well resourced, well knowledgeable organizations to work with smaller limited capacity organizations in those neighborhoods too.
0:59:19
So we forster a lot of collaboration when we're granting and we're we're looking in neighborhoods that we're trying to provide support and investment in.
