CVIIC Partnership with Santa Clara University My Own Business Institute
We are pleased to announce the CVIIC partnership with Santa Clara University My Own Business Institute (MOBI) has been agreed upon in order to provide Central Valley immigrant families with valuable entrepreneurial development opportunities.
CVIIC began to work on immigrant entrepreneurship activities through a pilot project that was launched in Fall 2020 and targeted Latino immigrant families residing in the Central Valley. The project was designed and implemented with the collaboration of multiple partner agencies, including State Center Adult School Consortium, Sequoias Adult School Consortium, Immigrants Rising, Valley Small Business Development Center, Fresno Adult School, Fresno Area Hispanic Foundation, Education and Leadership Foundation, SIREN, Fresno Adult School, Justice Action Center. A key lesson learned from the pilot project is that the interest in entrepreneurial development among Central Valley immigrants is immense, surpassing the resources current available.
In response to this emerging reality, CVIIC is now in the process of developing a more ambitious initiative that can better address the needs and interests of immigrant families residing in the Central Valley. This includes the expansion of entrepreneurship-related services and the creation of an Immigrant Entrepreneurship Hub. To this end, the CVIIC partnership with Santa Clara University’s MOBI represents an exceptional opportunity to offer a tried and tested online learning resource that is already being utilized by thousands of people worldwide.
CVIIC was established in Fresno in February 2014. Likewise, the My Own Business Institute (MOBI), which first brought its free entrepreneurship curriculum online in 2000, was created in October 2014 at the Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the Santa Clara University Leavey School of Business. MOBI offers an online learning platform that makes available three entrepreneurship courses: Starting a Business; Business Expansion; Quick Start Entrepreneur. The courses are available in English and Spanish.
Drew Starbird, Executive Director of MOBI, stated: “The MOBI team is thrilled to be working with CVIIC to help immigrant families start businesses, create jobs, and strengthen communities. We are proud to contribute to CVIIC’s inspirational mission.”
The partnership with MOBI is of strategic importance to CVIIC because it helps to build the entrepreneurial development infrastructure that is needed for Central Valley immigrant families. It will enable CVIIC to provide an option that can benefit two sets of immigrants: those capable of self-paced online learning and those that participate in CVIIC’s entrepreneurial development classes and can utilize the online platform in conjunction with the weekly classes offered by CVIIC. Moreover, the availability of MOBI as a platform with a self-paced option will make it possible to serve larger numbers of immigrants and not be limited by the constraints inherent in in-person classes.
