Where business can help

As we mark the one-year anniversary of the violence in Sherman Park sparked by the fatal police shooting of Sylville Smith, it’s clear that some of the glaring and challenging social and economic issues of Milwaukee’s north side remain. Among those challenges are high unemployment rates among African American men and a lack of livable wage job opportunities within the community.

But there are also signs of hope.

The success of such recent initiatives as The Joseph Project, which since September 2015 has facilitated the hiring of more than 170 men and women from Milwaukee’s north side in livable wage jobs, points to a significant workforce pool eager for honest hard work and economic opportunity. In recent months, we have heard more and more conversations around the opportunities for entrepreneurship as part of the solution in underserved neighborhoods.

However, in recent history, Milwaukee has not had the reputation as an entrepreneurial city. In a year when new company formation rose nationally, Wisconsin dropped from 45th place to the bottom, according to the Kauffman Foundation’s annual Index of Start-up Activity released in early June. In Kauffman’s comparison of the top 40 metro areas, Milwaukee fared no better. The state’s biggest metro area was second-to-last for startup activity, edging out Pittsburgh. And Milwaukee was last for its rate of new entrepreneurs, with just 130 for every 100,000 adults, compared with 550 for every 100,000 adults in Austin, Texas, the top finisher.

We believe this can — and must — change. Sherman Park has long been known as a neighborhood that bucked the sad historical trend of segregation and prided itself on multiculturalism and ethnic diversity. We believe that both Sherman Park and Milwaukee as a whole can become a place of growing opportunity for job seekers, job creators and entrepreneurs. We believe that working collaboratively with diverse stakeholders will foster conditions necessary for current and aspiring business owners and entrepreneurs to proclaim: I can make it here.

Among the variables necessary for entrepreneurial and business success is adequate infrastructure, understood as a spectrum of physical, social, financial and intellectual assets that interconnect to foster a culture of starting things. One such infrastructure-building partnership is that of the PRISM Economic Development Corp. and LAUNCH-MKE.

LAUNCH MKE, modeled after proven urban entrepreneurship programs in other cities, will provide training, coaching and resources to enable urban entrepreneurs and businesses in Milwaukee to succeed, creating opportunities to build healthy and growing communities through entrepreneurship and new businesses. The first cohorts will begin this fall.

PRISM exists to stimulate community wealth creation and establish legitimate communityshared prosperity in the Sherman Park and other low-wealth neighborhoods of Milwaukee.

There is growing recognition in the community development world that marketplace solutions and wealth creation are essential for transforming low-income neighborhoods and providing individual opportunity.

In his sermon “On Being A Good Neighbor,” Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., stated: “The true neighbor will risk their position, their prestige, and even their life for the welfare of others. In dangerous valleys and hazardous pathways, they will lift some bruised and beaten person to a higher and more nobler life.”

This is what we must do and must do together for the good of our city.

How startups could help.