Niel Ritchie, Board Chair of Main Street Project visits Northfield

Posted by Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin on September 7, 2007

I spent half of the day yesterday working with Niel Ritchie, the Board Chair of Main Street Project, the parent organization of the Latino Enterprise Center. He is also the Executive Director of the League of Rural Voters and oversees the operations for Main Street Project. One of these operations is the Latino Enterprise Center which is based in Northfield.

Main Street Project (MSP) became the parent organization for the Latino Enterprise Center, under the Rural Latino Enterprise Initiative on February 1st, 2007, which is officially our first day of operations.

Since then, many things have happened, this blogg is a good record of projects and contributions to Northfield and the network of individual and organizational supporters that we have built. In other communities around Minnesota, our work has been focused in supporting Latino/a leaders so that they can create their own Latino/a enterprise support initiatives.  If anyone is interested in our work in depth, please call or e-mail us, I will be more than happy to help.

Yesterday was a great day. We started with a meeting with Jim Blaha, Executive Director of the Community Action Center, the subject was “the Newcomer Project”, designed to provide recent immigrants in our region with a welcoming environment, tools to get started, programs to support their leadership skills, and organizational support to get them on their feet to pursue their goals.

At 9:00 am, we met with Griff Wigley, our most outstanding local community blogger, the topic was related to harnessing the power of blogging to connect communities, their leaders and sharing resources and experiences accross rural Minnesota communities. Though there was no specific project to discuss, Griff has supported my own entry into this blogging world and both Niel and I believe that we can replicate this experience for other Latino leaders or community leaders in other small towns. The next step will be a discussion about structuring a program to do just this afterGriff is done with some major projects he is working on.

At 10:00 am, we met with Rick Estenson upstairs of First National Bank. Our topic was very specific. “How to structure a lending program based on experiences in other small and large cities and towns where Latino businesses have struggled in the past and are now successful contributors of leaders and economic activity to their communities”. Though a long title for our conversation, the issue is simple. We need to start a training program for Latino entrepreneurs in Northfield, Faribault and Owatonna (to cover a sizable population).

We know that business training programs alone are almost a waste of resources without the technical assistance, lending and mentoring components organized in a deliverable package. The idea then is to structure a “business development program” rather than a “business training program”, and assemble the complete package before launching it. RickEstenson is our best local allied in crafting this strategy, though our best allies in develping the program structure are in the Twin Cities and cities accross the Midwest, our local initiative and partners is what counts at the end. From here, we just need to follow the trail until we come back to the starting line with a full package under our arms.

At 11:00 am, we met with Jaci Smith, the new Managing Editor at the Northfield News, which has been covering our work at the Latino Enterprise Center since we started. The purpose of the meeting was to inform our local media on what the Latino Enterprise Center is in relationship to Main Street Project, my own history working with Niel since 1994 and the broader context under which the work with Latino immigrants takes place, such as what defines our keys to success and strategies, and a broad exploration of the issues related to the large influx of undocumented immigrants in this country.

We finished our morning with lunch for Jaci and Niel as my guests at our Rotary Club.