Start A Business – Change your Life Program

This program helps disadvantaged people create sustainable businesses as a pathway out of poverty.

Two out of every ten people in Baltimore are living in poverty, that’s every 5^th person you might meet. So, what can we do about this? What can we do to help lift people out of poverty?

The University of Notre Dame in South Bend Indiana has been working on this wicked problem for more than 20 years and they have created a very effective program, the Urban Poverty Business Initiative, a program that helps disadvantaged people create sustainable businesses as a pathway out of poverty.

This 10-month program provides training, mentoring, free business consultation services, connection to community resources, access to micro lending funds, and ongoing monitoring and metric tracking for continuous improvement.

With the support of the PNC Foundation, the Hunt’s Memorial United Methodist Church (Mission Committee and Carroll’s-Gills Permanent Endowment Committee), the Urban Poverty Business Initiative, and the Center for Urban Families, we launched the Start A Business - Change Your Life program in Baltimore in February of 2023.

Applications are now being accepted for the second cohort, which will begin training on February 10, 2024. The deadline for applications for the second cohort is January 26, 2024. 

For more information, click here.

To apply, click here.

Accomplishments as of September 2023:

In the first seven months of this 10-month program we have accomplished the following:

• 66 applicants were accepted into the first cohort, we have a waiting list for the second cohort which will start in February of 2024
• 41 people completed the 6-week training program, 62%
• 32 people have decided they are ready for mentoring, an hour every 2 weeks for 8 sessions, 78%
• 20 people have been matched with mentors so far, we are still in need of mentors
  • If you have successfully started a business or successfully run a business and are willing to commit to being a mentor for 8 one-hour sessions (one-hour, every two weeks for 8 sessions in total), apply here
• A consulting course has been added to the curriculum at Morgan, this course will offer free business consulting to program participants who have completed mentoring starting in the spring of 2024 (each program participant will have 4 projects completed by students/faculty)