“Over the past 20 of years working with refugee and immigrant entrepreneurs the largest barrier I’ve seen to opening a successful storefront is managing the financial burden of overhead at the beginning of their business venture” shares Cynthia Brown, Director of the Navigate Enterprise Center. “The new Jewish Family & Career Services and Kentucky Refugee Ministries Artisan Shop will mitigate …
Warren Van Nort is a rising junior at duPont Manual High School and a National Honor Society (NHS) candidate. He is running a personal needs drive to benefit people who turn to the Sonny & Janet Meyer Food Pantry at JFCS, not only for food but also for toiletries and other essentials. Here’s what Warren shared about his project. I …
It’s not easy for a refugee to resettle in the U.S. The process requires patience, flexibility and a will to succeed. These difficulties intensify when the new American was a professional in their country of origin or the secondary country they fled to on their path to the U.S. Refugee professionals must learn a new language and new systems, and …
Preparing for post-secondary education or employment after high school can be daunting for any student nearing graduation, but students with disabilities can face more barriers as they enter adulthood. In 2014, federal vocational rehabilitation law added pre-employment transition services (or pre-ETS), which are designed to prepare students for post-secondary education and the workforce by supplementing existing programs in schools and …
A Roman philosopher once said, “ Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.” Connecting Communities, a new program from JFCS’s Navigate Enterprise Center, exemplifies this message by turning the preparation we do with our clients every day into an opportunity to create life-changing experiences. Through a bit of luck, JFCS began working with the Fund for the Arts NeXt …
View this on WLKY. https://www.wlky.com/article/mosaic-awards-to-pay-tribute-to-first-generation-immigrants-making-a-difference/27445709
JFCS has been providing assistance to microbusinesses for more than 20 years. In 1995, the program started with funding from the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement to give newly arrived refugees the opportunity to explore self-employment through microenterprise development as a viable means to financial self-sufficiency. Since then, it has grown into the Navigate Enterprise Center. Services have expanded to …
Born in Antwerp, Belgium, Fred Gross was a toddler when Nazi Germany began targeting the Jews in Europe. His family escaped the genocide of millions of Jews, and they found freedom on the Norfolk, Virginia, docks in 1946. Years later while on a trip to Europe in 1984, Fred’s wife, Carolyn, started questioning family members and began to piece together …
Surekha Kulkarni is a social entrepreneur, jewelry designer and founder and program director of Beaded Treasures Project. When Surekha moved from India to Louisville in 1986, she did so to help her son Nikhil, who has dyslexia and the schools in India were not able to make the needed accommodations. “We felt like we had no choice and so we …
Passover is my holiday of remembering — the one that brings me back to Seder tables with the immigrants and first generations of my own family. They spoke Yiddish and English — equal parts separate from, and bound up with, America. Some at the table owned small neighborhood businesses that did just well enough to get by. Others grew enterprises …
