GRAND RAPIDS Five years ago, John Wilson formed a private family foundation and set out to help lift people out of poverty in Mason County, on Lake Michigan north of Muskegon.
Wilson s group, The Pennies from Heaven Foundation, helped organize an employer resource network serving 12 companies and about 20 percent of the local workforce. Such networks are cropping up around Michigan as tools for employers to pool resources and tackle barriers that keep their workers from holding down a job, from transportation to housing to child care.
Wilson estimates the foundation invested about $300,000 to open Oaktree Academy, a nonprofit child care center housed inside a former school in Ludington, and another $100,000 annually to operate it.
Groups will guide chamber’s work and outreach, create peer networks, foster minority business growth, inclusion. Author: Grand Rapids Business Journal, Rachel Watson Published: 7:07 AM EDT May 17, 2021 Updated: 7:07 AM EDT May 17, 2021
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (GRBJ) - The Grand Rapids Area Chamber of Commerce has taken its diversity, equity and inclusion goals to the next level by creating three minority business councils.
The Grand Rapids Chamber hosted a virtual town hall last month introducing the Hispanic/Latino, Asian American and Black Minority Business Councils that will guide the chamber’s efforts to listen and deliver programming for minority business communities and foster minority business leadership, growth and belonging within the greater Grand Rapids area.
Grand Rapids Business Journal
Groups will guide chamber’s work and outreach, create peer networks, foster minority business growth, inclusion.
Courtesy Grand Rapids Area Chamber of Commerce
(As seen on WZZM TV 13) The Grand Rapids Area Chamber of Commerce has taken its diversity, equity and inclusion goals to the next level by creating three minority business councils.
The Grand Rapids Chamber hosted a virtual town hall last month introducing the Hispanic/Latino, Asian American and Black Minority Business Councils that will guide the chamber’s efforts to listen and deliver programming for minority business communities and foster minority business leadership, growth and belonging within the greater Grand Rapids area.
Why the Grand Rapids Chamber is sitting on the sidelines in LGBTQ civil rights fight in Lansing
Fair and Equal Michigan via Facebook
In October, the Fair and Equal Michigan ballot campaign submitted more than 483,000 signatures to the Secretary of State s office for an initiative to prohibit discrimination against LGBTQ people in Michigan by amending the state s 45-year-old civil rights law.
The citizens initiative seeking to make it illegal to fire or deny someone housing because they re gay or transgender gained support last week from a half-dozen local chambers of commerce across Michigan.
Business and economic development groups in Flint, Jackson, Lansing, Midland, Saginaw and Traverse City joined the Detroit Regional Chamber, the Ypsilanti Regional Chamber and Southwest Michigan First in backing Fair and Equal Michigan, an initiative petition to amend the state s civil rights law that may arrive at the Michigan Legislature s doorstep later this year.