We Love Buford Highway, Inc.

Our solution is taking a grassroots approach as an alternative to the traditional, chamber of commerce structures, realizing the unique collaboration qualifiers from our local immigrant-owned businesses. Concentric Circles of Buford Highway targets local strip malls and plazas, in which many of the corridor's 970+ immigrant-owned businesses operate, to build relationships against the grains of a pay-to-play model, but rather (A) to gain social understanding and (B) to pass knowledge and collaboration opportunities that directly support businesses so that they can leverage the area's nearly half a century old’s brand equity known as Buford Highway into the fold of their retention and growth initiatives. The first step is outreach and relationship building within immediate footprints (plaza by plaza) with business owners to assess baseline engagement requirements (access and barriers) such as language, immigration status, and heritage/cultural backgrounds. The next step is to provide the key deliverable in the form of a Concentric Needs & Gaps Assessment that includes resource mapping and strategies that could encompass some of the following areas of opportunities in which gaps exist for our small immigrant-owned businesses:

1. Awareness and connection to grants, institutions, and general small biz support (financial literacy, understanding margins, lean planning, recruitment)

2. Best practices (ROI, digital, data-driven, customer relationship building, marketing versus sales, collaborative initiatives with other businesses or municipalities)

3. Liaison between the small business owners and local authorities to resolve issues such as permits, certificates, inspections, etc. 

4. The alternative board to bounce on pain points and major decisions

The biggest problem that we are trying to solve is two-fold. First, a deep stable of knowledge about the small-sized business immigrant owner, their struggles, barriers, trust-building qualifiers, and needs. Secondly, rapid growth as urban development projects, inflation and the cost of housing continue to increase across the corridor's local municipalities. According to a recent report to the council, prices in the city of Chamblee (central district) are up from 80 percent to 100 percent in the past decade for both houses and condos. And in Doraville, the city which is home to many of our small AAPI businesses, is now the new home to Gray Television, the largest owner of top-rated local television stations and digital assets in the country. Meanwhile, the Atlanta region's gas and food prices went up more than 10 percent in the past 12 months, a growth rate higher than any other state in the US, forcing people to change their daily routines.

The sources of displacement could be many reasons; we have identified the following: 

• Second and Third generations of immigrant families relocating
• Corridors farther north provide newer buildings, infrastructure, and benefits
• Growing competing markets in northern suburbs (culturally aware consumers and talent)
• New development and zoning pushing out old businesses
• Businesses no longer thriving on Buford Highway
• Challenges working with the local municipality (policies, ordinances, and public safety)
• Limited resources or strategies that prevent participation in community-wide economic driver opportunities (festivals and events)

The immigrant-owned businesses of the corridor represent over 21-nationalities, with over 6 local languages and at times, various citizenship statuses and very different cultural perspectives and backgrounds. The toughest parts of connection and collaboration start at the entry points of general introductions because so many of our small business owners' engagement factors have dependencies on the areas of language, trust, and cultural adeptness. The disconnection based on barriers and access, inadvertently adds to the distance between stakeholders and businesses.

When a local Mexican immigrant business owner reached out to our executive director to express the complexities of a permitting issue in which when he tried to resolve it in person with the local city, was given the answer, “your license is no longer valid, you cannot run your business.” After two years of no responses, the owner didn't know where to turn for help. We immediately called up city staff to bridge the miscommunications. The business owner not only resolved the issue but also joined the city’s downtown authority association. We want to foster more of these success journeys.   

Our mission of preservation drives relationships and initiatives between
businesses and stakeholders. The collective needs and obstacles of our
immigrant-owned businesses are a vital piece of the corridor’s longevity
and vibrancy, we work to ensure that they have a voice in the brand
equity that they have worked to create.

Through a relationship with Georgia Power's Economic Development teams, we know that the corridor is home to nearly 1000 immigrant-owned businesses (967 to be exact, figures based on 2021 data) and 73% are Asian-owned, while the remaining are largely Latino and BIPOC owners. We do not know much about genders, education, and ages, but we do know that the immigrant-owned businesses generated 1.7 million in annual revenue, and employed 5600 immigrants.

Annual payrolls total over $184,000,000.00. The key areas in which we know our businesses are being underserved are in the areas of local policy awareness, and how local ordinances such as changes in zoning, directly impact their operations and decisions. We also know that many of our small business owners are wearing many hats, particularly with recent labor shortages. Pressure points like these tighten an owner's capacity in areas of marketing, small business advocacy, grants, operational best practices, and community-engagement opportunities such as festivals and events in which they simply cannot stop to entertain let alone fill out applications or translate reading materials.

The solution stems from an MO that is very common among immigrant business owners where their decision-making soundboard is mainly made up of friends, family, and immediate guardians (investors and staff seldomly do not make the cut). The focus of the solution through the ongoing touchpoints of communication is very much about being absorbed into their current circle of trust. Here are some topline categories:

• Restaurants
• Ethnic Grocery Stores
• Banking
• Big Box Retail
• Small Shop Retail
• Wholesale
• Office
• Personal Services - nail salons, hair salons, dry cleaners
• Business Services - insurance, taxes, check cashing, title loans

We have done some work and are in partnership with  Colleen Hammelman, PhD https://clas-pages.charlotte.edu/colleen-hammelman/, Assistant Professor Department of Geography and Earth Sciences Director Charlotte Action Research Project (CHARP) to share knowledge of our communities in Charlotte, NC. There are no active plans for expansion, however, there could be plans and initiatives to add this project as part of the partnership.

We work to preserve the multicultural identity of Atlanta’s Buford Highway. We see the corridor’s people as the epicenter for advocacy and impact where immigrant communities (for which small businesses have shaped) thrive for generations. We drive our mission through the following four pillars that interlock in how we understand and best serve our communities:

STORY – Collect and share testimonies of the corridor to raise awareness of the significance of immigrant stories and to identify and mobilize in areas where advocacy needs exist.

ARTS & CULTURE – Catalyze advocacy, education, and awareness through the Arts that represent the immigrant communities of the corridor.

CARE – To provide and connect direct benefits to the people of the corridor related to health and well-being.

ENTERPRISE – Support the vitality, retention, and sustainability, of local immigrant-owned businesses, through collaboration and awareness initiatives that directly impact the corridor’s entrepreneurs.

Our theory of change within the proposed solution is about shared interests. What are the desired outcomes of discovering this shared core? Trust and credible influence in decision-making processes. When we look at ethnographic studies, the most essential piece is the act of consistently showing up. As humans, our most basic connectors are familiarity and community. As immigrants, our most basic instinct is to survive. In the effort of deepening relationships within the ecosystems of immigrant-owned businesses, we must truly meet them where they are in-language, cultural heritage, literacies, and access (communication channels). By investing in the time to earn trust while building relationships, we can begin to break barriers and learn about real needs, biases, individual and majority circumstances, motivators, and qualifiers. These methodologies do not typically reside in the confines of chambers and business associations, because the wide casted net does not work in communities that are historically marginalized. In 2018, our organization developed the first of its kind, the Buford Highway Business Directory, raising light on immigrant-owned businesses which catalyzed local stakeholder discussions including this 2018 study. Where we missed the original mark was that this directory benefited only one of the many circles that matter to the mission of preservation, the business owner.

From these experiences, the following is a phased approach that we believe will operationalize the theory of change:

Step 1: Let them know that we SEE them - The Buford Highway Business Directory V.2

Step 2: Mobilize the Directory within the Business Communities and Gain Engagement that leads to Conversations and Dialog

Step 3: Ask for More Knowledge About Successes and Challenges

Step 4: Offer the Concentric Circle Solution

Step 5: Foster Ongoing Connection and Collaboration through Consistent Communication

In 2018 we created the corridor's first Buford Highway Business Directory, a list of 300 local immigrant-owned businesses broken out by various data points such as type of goods or services, ethnicities, and footprints, to raise awareness of the multicultural landscape in which our small, immigrant-owned, moms and pops contribute to Atlanta and the southeast region. Through this project, we strive to provide the solution to 25 businesses representing 5 Community Footprints in 5 Years. By the end of the first 12 months, we will form our Founding Circle of 5.

Board of Directors, local government officials for 3 municipalities, tourism, county commissioners, arts and culture master planning, city planners, economic development teams, developers, property owners, commercial real estate agents, school leaders, community ambassadors, business owners, residents, and sister nonprofit organizations that serve in the same immigrant/ refugee space.

There is nothing more unknown about the multicultural fabric that is Buford Highway, an approximate 10 miles stretch that ties three of Atlanta’s major metropolis areas, than its people. Characterized as a vibrant, diversely represented community of residents and businesses who live, work, study, and play, for nearly 50-years, has also been a community, widely ignored in terms of social rights and representation.

Our small businesses have been struggling at a time of deep economic impacts largely based on xenophobia around the origins of the pandemic and the citizenship status of our immigrant communities. At the onset of shelter in place, when dining halls and offices were mandated to close, we wrote letters on behalf of plaza tenants to property owners and landlords to plea for a temporary rent freeze, as very few of our shopkeepers applied for the Small Business Administration's PPP or EIDL loans. We encouraged businesses to amp up their digital presence and created an online tool for them to share their hours of operations. We were guardians of their stories and worked closely with headline media groups to ensure that representation came directly from those suffering, here is an example of an article our executive director worked closely on with the writer during the pitch: https://time.com/5948274/atlanta-shootings-attacks-asian-american-business-owners/.

Through a conversation at a time, our solution's structure is built on organic trust. Whether it be an awareness piece such as Sabores De Buford Highway, or our podcast, Voices of a Highway, we seek to build "street cred" first before we ask for submission of city-wide or county-driven surveys or applications (most are in English), because this is how our community's respond. And though this might be perceived as a slow-moving solution, we go back to the Theory of Change, all great bonds and knowledge take time to cultivate. The "why" of the need for this solution is that no entity is doing it, yet leaders all across counties and cities continue to fail or miss the mark on a cohesive social understanding, while increasing the gap through momentary checkboxes to fulfill immediate agendas, not realizing a longer-term strategy or investment. We Love Buford Highway has fulfilled as a go-to for many leaders to leverage micro-grassroots relationships off our engagements, fundraising, and advocacy efforts. We believe that more concerted investments can help our business communities unite and live the benefits of the sweat equity their families have built from previous generations, an important action towards the goals of stabilizing a displacing market.

There was a time not so long ago when one could not find a bottle of soy sauce in this corridor, we must recognize and make concerted efforts to help business owners make comprehensive decisions through the lens of retention. With rising costs and lack of staff, this is a pivotal preservation moment.

What works best for our communities is showing up at their place of business -- their home away from home. Research and outreach are done ahead of time, mostly through patrons who knows the person, who knows the owner. An important piece of this is following the community connection dots. For example, we work with many international consulates that reside along the corridor. Through our mission and work, we've established solid and collaborative relationships which have allowed us access to their local networks, and immigrant-owned businesses are absolutely on their call lists. Additionally, we have and continue to identify key community ambassadors -- you know who these are, the local town hall "mayors" who have deep roots in the history and development of a specific community and place.

As mentioned above, we strive to provide the Concentric Circle solution to 25 businesses representing 5 Community Footprints in 5 Years. By the end of the first 12 months, we will form our Founding Circle of 5. After presenting the Concentric Circle Solution which lays out a customized report for the business owner of specific needs and gaps we hope to achieve the following impact goals:

1. Identify at minimum, 1-2 immediate points of need and/or gaps.

2. Serve at minimum, 1-2 immediate points of needs and/or gaps through connection or active collaboration into resources or opportunities.

3. Gain at minimum, 1-2 referrals from the business owner to a fellow owner within the shared footprint.

Our solution team's lead, Lily Pabian, is well-positioned to meet the challenges in three ways: she's a native immigrant of this corridor, she was raised by an immigrant entrepreneur of this corridor, and she has over 30 years of skills, knowledge, and percipient experiences in developing strategies (B2B, B2C, and C2B). The second member of the solutions team is Natalia Garzón, our agency's Community Engagement Director. Natalia holds a degree in Literature and Creative Writing and brings skillsets as an ESL (English as Second Language) Associate Tutor for Atlanta's Tibetan Monks and established a partnership between Latin American Association Atlanta's Club de Lectura and the Fox Center for Humanistic Inquiry at Emory University.

Over the past two years, this leadership team has worked shoulder-to-shoulder with the community in their most vulnerable circumstances of surviving this historic pandemic. We brought the very first immigrant-centric testing site to the corridor's small businesses and residents, offering a multilanguage experience where our communities were testing at a positivity rate of 70% compared to 15% in Atlanta (just 7 miles south). We fed 96,000 people with culturally centric foods and hosted the first multilanguage vaccination sites where we advocated for funds from the American Rescue Plan to support these efforts. We have earned genuine street cred by openly sharing small business awareness initiatives and information with our over 20,000 followers. And we continue to amplify their voices across leadership and stakeholder decision-making tables so that these businesses leverage this area's legacy brand equity.

Our solution of taking a grassroots approach to gain social understanding and to pass knowledge and collaboration opportunities that directly support businesses directly meets the Truist Foundation and MIT Solve's challenge of connecting small business owners and key stakeholders such as investors, local policymakers, and mentors with the relevant experience to improve coordination, collaboration, and knowledge bases within the small business ecosystem. We strongly believe that this partnership in terms of access into the Truist Foundation and MIT Solve's larger networks of resources and connections could have a direct impact on the ecosystems of the immigrant-owned businesses of the Atlanta region because we are engaged and asked every day by local stakeholders to engage within this premise. 

Small business development and advocacy organizations, economic development organizations and departments, community engagement and development organizations and departments, social service organizations, direct assistance organizations, and those that want to support immigrant communities of the greater Atlanta region.