Qualitas of Life Foundation

Me Preparo Para Emprender is an introduction to entrepreneurship for low-income Latinas in New York City. It guides aspiring micro-entrepreneurs through how to prepare for and start a business, including:

• How to establish a business plan.
• Gain the knowledge necessary to develop and execute business ideas
• Acquire basic tools to manage business finances
• Connect with resources in the city to start your own business
• Build a trust-worthy relationship with financial institutions, legal agencies,
and government services.

It is an intensive, seven-session online course that can support up to 50
participants per course. The total course is 14 hours and dives into 7 core topics using video lectures, discussions, articles, cases study, quizzes, surveys, and assignments. Participants are connected with the government agencies and financial institutions that are critical to getting their businesses off the ground.

Our students are community members with a business idea or a business in initial stage who want to develop, establish a small business, and grow economically from their own capabilities. This program benefits anyone
who is interested in learning basic life skills such as problem-solving, innovative thinking, teamwork, business, finance, and gain knowledge how to run a small business, even those who may be skeptical about financial institutions, are good candidates. This program highlights the available tools and resources in finding a way to start a business with basic entrepreneurship concepts.

This program provides Spanish-speaking Latinas with culturally and language-adapted tools, and connects them with experts that will enrich their business and financial education.

The communities we serve have been disproportionately affected by both the Covid-19 pandemic and the subsequent financial crisis, especially the women in our community.  In March of 2021, The Center for American Progress reported, 

“The COVID-19 pandemic and resulting recession have wreaked havoc on the United States’ Latino community. Due to Latino workers being overrepresented in industries that have been hit hardest by the pandemic, Latinos have faced large losses in employment, particularly among Latinas in the service industry...Hispanic or Latina women have also seen disproportionate economic impacts. Women accounted for 100 percent of U.S. job losses in December, with Hispanic or Latina women alone accounting for 45 percent of that job loss.”

The need in our community has never been greater. Qualitas is singularly situated to support both the immediate and long-term recovery of our neighbors in need. We are a trusted and respected member of the Hispanic immigrant community. We have proven financial literacy curriculum that is designed specifically for the community we serve. Finally, we have a track record of successfully supporting our community to build their financial security and have shown that we can mobilize resources and pivot our approach in times of great need.

Over the past decade, we have developed a wealth of resources to reach a broad and diverse Latinx community to ensure that thousands of immigrants and first-generation Hispanic-Americans have the tools to take control of their finances.

This educational course on finance and business creation responds to the needs of our Latinx community, specifically Latinas, to start their own economic activity after the pandemic. This course was created to train the community that has been most affected by the pandemic, with a focus on topics, challenges and resources to launch and run successful businesses.

Language barriers, lack of trust in financial entities, low self-esteem, financial uncertainty, digital gap, and among others, stop our community from starting their own business. However, during the imminent lack of employment in 2020, at the peak of the pandemic, our community demonstrated resilience and generated income in the most difficult times.

Qualitas of Life facilitates a course that covers all the primary concepts of the entrepreneurship process, focusing on improving the economic opportunities but also demystifying all the fears and common obstacles that do not allow the community to advance in creating a company.

If this Challenge seeks to help small businesses owned by women of color to plan, market, and grow, by connecting them with key stakeholders, providing financial education, and creating access to sources of capital, Me Preparo Para Emprender is a perfect fit.  

The majority of our participants are from Mexico (62%) and the rest come from every corner of Latin America. The countries most represented are Ecuador, Dominican Republic, Honduras, Colombia, Peru and Guatemala. As it is often the case, most left their countries in search of better economic or educational opportunities, and to provide their loved ones with the means to overcome difficult circumstances back home.  86% are women, 13% are men.

Low-income and working-class Latinas make up 86% of our participants. About half of them live with a spouse or partner and have 2 or 3 children. On average, they have been in the US for 14.5 years and are employed in the service industry or in the informal sector. The majority report they have an annual income of $12,000 or less, and are not able to rely on a steady monthly income. Many were employed in service jobs as restaurant workers and cleaners. Thousands of these jobs have been lost due to COVID-19. While many resources have become available to support those facing economic hardship, not all of these resources are available to our communities, and many are not being communicated in Spanish.

Research has shown that immigrant entrepreneurs have an outsize impact by launching businesses that contribute to the revitalization of underserved neighborhoods, creating jobs and growing the local economy. However, Latinx entrepreneurs have the lowest level of financial institution-backed loans and access capital due to a lack of knowledge and connections. This program will close this gap.

Yes, Qualitas of Life Foundation already provides services to Latinx communities in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. For this expansion, we would build partnerships with new and existing business services in New Jersey and Pennsylvania to bring this entrepreneurship to the communities we already serve.

The mission of Qualitas of Life Foundation (Qualitas) is to improve the standard of living of Hispanic individuals and their families, and to foster their financial health and security through financial education and asset building programs and activities. To that end, our overarching goal for this program is to help Latinas start sustainable businesses that create long-term financial security for themselves and their families.

Research has shown that immigrant entrepreneurs have an outsize impact by launching businesses that contribute to the revitalization of underserved neighborhoods, creating jobs and growing the local economy. However, Latinx entrepreneurs have the lowest level of financial institution-backed loans and access capital due to a lack of knowledge and connections. 

Research also shows that when women have access to adequate resources, they invest a higher portion of their earnings in their families and communities, speeding up community development.

By providing a program that gives Latinas both a foundational entrepreneurial education and connecting them to the stakeholders they need to access credit, banking and financial services, facilities, and other business resources, we are not only helping those women, but bolstering whole low-income and immigrant Latinx communities in the United States.

The activity is our 7-session intensive course. The output from each course is that 50 low-income Latinas have the tools they need to start small businesses. The short term outcome is that these women start these businesses and achieve short-term financial security for themselves and their families. The long-term outcome is that these women's businesses continue in a way that is sustainable, and they invest in their communities, transforming neighborhoods and advancing the economic prosperity of Latinx communities.

Our solution can support 50 small business per course. To date, we have served 109 micro-entrepreneurs. Next year, we would like to provide one course per quarter, serving 200 micro-entrepreneurs. In five years, we hope to offer the course each month in different locales, supporting up to 600 micro-entrepreneurs.

Qualitas of Life Foundation has been providing Financial Education programs to the Hispanic community in New York City for 14 years. Qualitas of Life Foundation (QoLF) works hand in hand with other community organizations in the city to provide financial education workshops to Hispanic immigrant communities. For this entrepreneurship program, we have partnered with NYC Small Business Services, Centro Community Partners, and the New York Immigration Coalition. 

We began this program to meet the needs of the low-income and working-class women who make up 86% of our participants. A group of these women requested this kind of support and we worked to create a solution. In expanding this program, we will continue to work with organizations serving Hispanic/Latinx communities and government offices and agencies supporting small businesses in their jurisdiction.

Qualitas of Life Foundation collaborates with each of our community-based partners to determine the needs of the communities we collectively serve in order to design the educational intervention to be carried out. We have experience with population niches ranging from recently arrived migrants, to more established families with legal ties to the country, children who are US citizens, to more vulnerable populations such as survivors of sexual and domestic violence.

We were founded by a Hispanic woman, and our interventions have always been based on research on the needs of the low-income and immigrant Hispanic communities in the United States. We have successfully delivered these interventions for 14-years and continually evolve our offerings based on the requests of individual participants in our programs, as well as our partner organizations.

Most fundamentally, we speak the language of the community we serve. Most of our staff are native Spanish-speakers, all are bilinqual. We have a network of organizations serving Hispanic/Latinx communities with whom we have built rapport over the years. We often receive requests from new groups and individuals through word of mouth.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, we began engaging our community directly through radio, WhatsApp, and social media. WhatsApp is a free texting service, used by many people to connect with friends and family abroad. Many in our community have limited access to a computer, but most have consistent access to a smartphone, making this a particularly helpful form of communication.

For this solution, we provides a Zoom training for those who need to be familiarized with digital platforms, and we utilize a peer-to-peer text message communication platform to remind every student of their class schedule and keep them informed. 

We hope to serve 1,000 Latina micro-entrepreneurs in the next five years through this program. As we have already mentioned, the research shows that immigrant entrepreneurs - and especially women - have an outsized impact on their communities, revitalizing neighborhoods and creating economic opportunity in underserved areas. 

We hope to contribute to vibrant Hispanic/Latinx immigrant communities across the tri-state area by offering this solution quarterly, and eventually monthly.

As previously mentioned, our team is led by Hispanic women who have deep experience working with low-income and immigrant populations. Our Executive Director, Myriam Rebling worked at the Consulate General of Mexico in New York from 2011 to 2019 in the Political and Economic Affairs department, where she had the opportunity to develop the first Ventanilla de Educación Financiera in 2013, which would later be reproduced by other consulates throughout the country. She developed the relationship between the Consulate in New York and the community of Mexican professionals in the tri-state area, being one of the founding members of the Asociación de Profesionistas y Empresarios en Nueva York Foundation in 2013, which has originated in excess of one million dollars of scholarships for college education for Hispanic immigrants. 

The leader of this initiative, Sandra Vélez has 12 years of experience in Social Communication and the development of educational content on human rights issues for the Latino community. She has worked closely with the Hispanic community in New York City for the last five years.

In addition for funding for our solution, we are eager to work with Truist Foundation and MIT Solve around impact measurement, both direct and indirect. We believe that this program is worth investment because it creates economic opportunity within low-income and immigrant Hispanic populations, but we do not have sophisticated methods to measure this at this time. In partnership with the Inspire Awards, we would like to put these methods in place.

We prefer to partner with community-based organizations in local communities where we bring our services along with the local small business services agencies and chambers of commerce.