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Saturday, December 05, 2009

Cooperative Entrepreneurial Program Creates Jobs in Taos

By Leslie Elgood
CEO, New Mexico Community Capital
          As the state's economy experiences shocks and setbacks, there is at least one public-private partnership that is successfully growing a sustainable entrepreneurial network in New Mexico.
        The Taos Entrepreneurial Network supports the passion and ideas of local entrepreneurs, helping them transform their ideas into viable community businesses. Because TEN has thrived, it has proven to be a successful economic development model that could be emulated.
        TEN is an organization of entrepreneurs and local community leaders that emerged from a 2004 project of the Sirolli Foundation, an innovator in rural economic development. TEN's philosophy is based on the work of Ernesto Sirolli, who, as a young aid worker in Zambia in the early 1970s witnessed the deterioration of healthy, self-sufficient communities that were pushed into unsustainable, industrial types of development by foreign aid bureaucrats.
        The core of Sirolli's plan is "enterprise facilitation" — a multifaceted support system designed to help entrepreneurs turn their ideas into viable ventures by helping them find the resources and learn the skills they need to produce, market and finance a product or service.
        TEN adapted the idea to Taos and made some changes to fit local conditions. Where Sirolli employed an enterprise facilitator as a point person to coach individual entrepreneurs on Sirolli's methodology, TEN employed a "network facilitator" who focused simply on networking and let entrepreneurs choose their own ways of reaching their goals.
        TEN's network facilitator is pivotal to the complex web of relationships in TEN. The facilitator works with TEN's executive board and the entrepreneurs who volunteer their expertise and advice at monthly network meetings, and the facilitator is the direct link between entrepreneurs and the various resources they need.
        Dr. Sylvia Villarreal of the Taos Clinic for Children and Youth credits "network facilitation" with saving the region's only pediatric clinic. The clinic nearly closed due to problems getting timely and appropriate reimbursement for serving its Medicaid-eligible clients, who make up nearly 80 percent of the 24,000 northeast New Mexico children seen at the clinic.
        The Taos community — mobilized by TEN — helped the clinic secure emergency funding from the state of New Mexico and Holy Cross Hospital in Taos. The clinic has since forged long-term working agreements with Holy Cross physicians and obtained capital that funded construction of a new building in September 2009. "We're doing great," Villarreal said, thanks to "the amazing amount of networking that happened."
        The idea that the Sirolli model might take root in Taos began with Owen Lopez, executive director of the McCune Charitable Foundation, a nonprofit foundation based in Santa Fe. McCune undertook the project as part of its commitment to combat rural poverty through economic development, Lopez said. It teamed up with the state of New Mexico Department of Economic Development and the city of Taos to get the program through its first few years. Los Alamos National Security funded program expansion into San Miguel, Rio Arriba and Santa Fe Counties through LINK, an arm of the lab's Northern New Mexico Connect.
        At the end of its pilot stage, TEN reported that 31 new businesses had been created and four businesses were salvaged or expanded in the Taos area. More than 100 jobs were created or saved.
        Entrepreneurial communities like TEN have found a way to develop individuals' capacity and skills so they are able to participate more fully in their own economic success. Done effectively, listening, facilitating networks of support, and allowing those most affected to create their own paths are tools that are bringing about positive, real-world change. This is an example of what I'd call a Perfect TEN.
       

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