Becoming Project Brings Small Business Training to Calipatria

CALIPATRIA — A partnership formed last week in Calipatria aims to bring small business education and entrepreneurial support to the northern reaches of Imperial County, where limited resources have long stalled efforts to grow and retain local enterprises.

The Becoming Project and the Asociacion de Emprendedores signed a memorandum of understanding on Thursday, July 10, during an event hosted in Calipatria. An eight-week entrepreneurship course, set to begin in September, will provide instruction and technical assistance to aspiring business owners in the northend, especially those in monolingual Hispanic communities.

The training initiative is designed to serve Calipatria, Niland, Westmorland and other rural communities in Imperial County’s northend, offering a combination of education, individual assessment, and real-time startup support. The project is backed by Comite Civico del Valle and the Latino Community Foundation.

“This is a historic event,” said William Cooper, executive director of The Becoming Project. “In partnership with the Becoming Project, Asociacion de Emprendedores and Comite Civico del Valle, we started the first entrepreneurship training partnership at the northend of Imperial Valley. It means everything … an opportunity at a future.”

For Cooper, the effort reflects the core philosophy of The Becoming Project, which was founded in Imperial County to build long-term, community-driven economic opportunity. He described the new training program as a direct response to the unequal access to resources that residents in the northend have faced for decades.

“The opportunities that have been provided thus far in Imperial County are largely for the south end or the larger communities — the El Centros, the Calexicos, the Imperials — but this is an opportunity for the smaller rural communities that have just as much talent and just as much need, but not the resources to bring their dreams to life,” Cooper said.

“It’s a tenet of the Becoming Project to approach everything with a three-step method. It’s education first, then build the infrastructure, and that’s how you make communities grow.”

According to Cooper, the fall course will begin with a call for applications from residents of the northend. Participants will be selected based on individual interviews and assessments, with the program open both to those who already operate home-based or small businesses and to those who have business ideas and need help getting started.

“It’s going to be an eight-week course starting in September,” Cooper said. “It ends at the end of October before graduation. We’ll put out an open call to the residents inside the community in Imperial County, namely in the northend… We’ll bring them in, give individual assessments, and enroll people in the classes based on that, and then we tackle it one issue at a time. First the confidence, then the know-how, then the education, then the investment, and that’s how we’ll grow.”

The program, called Emprendedor@s, was developed by Asociacion de Emprendedores founder and president Monica Robles, who has spent more than three decades building leadership and small business development programs across California.

“This is (a) program where we train the local business owners and/or people that want to start a new business how to start and grow their business and how to empower themselves, develop their leadership skills, and learn the technical assistance to comply with the laws and regulations from the city, state, county, and federal governments,” Robles said.

Robles described the collaboration as a shared effort with multiple regional partners focused on inclusion and economic advancement.

Calipatria Mayor Michael Luellen praised the launch of the initiative and noted its potential to address long-standing gaps in financial literacy and business development support for northend residents.

“For decades, since before I was born, we’ve had small businesses, at-home enterprises, and mom and pop shops that have planted their roots here in the northend of Imperial County, but essentially have had to leave due to a lack of community involvement,” Luellen said.

He added that the city is actively looking for ways to support new business creation and improve the services available to local entrepreneurs.

“Just within the last two years, we’ve been able to expand our budget nearly 30 percent, and so we’ve been able to reinvest back into the community in areas that need it most,” he said. “Enterprise industries and our small businesses are another example of where exactly we need to continue to invest.

“We’ve been deciding to bring a planning department in-house, and with that, I think we can expedite a lot of the processes that local businesses need to continue to be successful, to continue to grow. And I think the city of Calipatria will be front and center in partnerships with these small businesses, with these agencies, as we diversify the economy and expand the educational backgrounds of so many residents here in Calipatria.”

During an interview, Cooper pointed to a variety of overlapping challenges affecting the region — economic instability, labor shortages and the breakdown of legacy industries like farming and sugar processing.

“The closure of Spreckels Sugar, the going out of the farmworker workforce, the Lithium Valley taxation deal that has taken all the money away from the northend … the union strike … harassment suits — this is all happening at one time,” Cooper said.

“But this all comes down to leadership. You have to have solid leaders with a clear vision. And in my opinion, Imperial County doesn’t have that right now.”

Cooper said The Becoming Project’s mission is grounded in creating opportunities locally, especially for workers facing economic displacement. The new course in Calipatria is part of what Cooper describes as a broader development strategy that includes other projects like Forever Green Farms, a hydroponic farming and clean agriculture initiative. This undertaking by The Becoming Project and Comite Civico would be created using a $240,000 grant from the California Jobs First Initiative. The grant covers planning, permitting and training — which Cooper sees as working in tandem with the new entrepreneurship education program.

“What we really loved about the idea is, first of all, it takes the talents that are already relevant inside of this community. This is an 80 percent farmworker community. They understand these systems. They just are going to learn new ways to apply them. We are excited about clean energy aid — clean ag, clean construction. This is going to be the future. So why not train them now?

“We can start with a workforce and we can easily grow that workforce by producing and creating local partnerships and then expanding what we do with the construction,” he continued. “How do you fill in the 500-plus-person gap from the Spreckels closing? How do you fill in the farmworker gap? How do you fill in the lack of teacher retention gap? You have to approach all of these things with a specific vision.”

Cooper said that city and county governments need to involve local voices and offer real tools for economic self-sufficiency.

“Short of (the cities) becoming independent economic districts, you have to create community advisory councils,” he said. “You’ve got to respect the decisions of those councils. You need people that’s closer to what’s happening on the ground.

“There are businesses here, and dozens of in-home businesses here. They just need the resources and the know-how. You need to learn how to set a budget, how to write a proposal, how to balance a bank account. And that’s what this partnership is going to teach them.”

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Cooper said the program will also provide funding to participants to help launch their businesses.

“We’re going to give them funding to start those businesses in real time. Come out to the light where everybody can see you.”

He cited one example of a local restaurant, Buckshot Diner in Niland, where the owner is considering retirement.

“She did come to our training the other night and she will be participating in the course,” he said. “That’s what we want to do. So how do you keep this? How do you make it stronger? How do you make it a part of the community so it lives on longer than us? That’s everything that we’re trying to do in Imperial County. Let it live on longer than us.”

Cooper also commented on the broader context of economic planning in the region, including the state’s push for lithium extraction and the promise of new jobs tied to Lithium Valley.

“Before I knew the larger scale about Lithium Valley… I always told this city, create your own opportunities, build your own infrastructure. You don’t let any one thing come and develop you because that one thing can be taken away, which we’re seeing right now with Spreckels.”

Cooper shared a story he heard at a recent environmental justice coalition meeting from a woman who lived in a town affected by pollution from an untested technology — the effects of this pollution didn’t manifest for almost 40 years after the technology’s implementation.

“Most of that population above 50 years old were either dead or had cancer,” he said. “Her entire family had it. Her husband died last year. She has two forms. All of her children have it. Everyone in the city, because it’s untested.

“It’s just too many environmental questions. It’s not to consider the lack of jobs and the lack of deals… You expect us to buy into something that’s going to cause a few people short-term good and a bunch of people long-term harm. And I can’t support that.”

He said community-centered alternatives remain a more reliable path forward.

“That’s what we’ve been trying to implement — with or without the Board of Supervisors.”

Cooper, who is originally from outside the region, said he continues to approach his work in the Imperial Valley with a simple guiding principle.

“At the end of the day, I’m always thinking, how do you do the most good for the most amount of people?” he said. “Trying to make a large and lasting impact — that sums me up in a nutshell. In the northend right now, we’re in Forgotten County and we just can’t afford it.”