*Luis Abundis, Owner of Nieves Cinco de Mayo with a client at his ice cream shop in Fruitvale, Oakland.*

Last month, the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco selected Centro Community Partners (Centro) as one of the 51 economic development projects and housing initiatives recipients of their annual grant program AHEAD.

This grant will support Centro's efforts addressing financial education for underserved communities and small business incubation for low to moderate-income entrepreneurs throughout California.

Our goal is to partner with 15-20 new microenterprise development organizations and together, train 300 entrepreneurs by September of 2016. The project will also help these organizations provide a basic standardized business curriculum to a greater number of entrepreneurs at a lower cost by using the Centro Business Planning App.

This project propels our mission with dedicated funds, and helps us make a difference for individuals, families and entire communities in our home state.

We want to give special thanks to Union Bank for sponsoring us, and look forward to sharing more news as our number of Entrepreneurship Affiliates throughout California grows.

Want to Become an Affiliate and Use Centro's Program?

Please contact Arturo Noriega at arturo@centrocommunity.org if you work for an organization that would like to launch a new microenterprise / small business development program (or revamp an existing one in English or Spanish.