CIELO

Entrepreneurship Program

CIELO’s Entrepreneurship Program helps disenfranchised prospective entrepreneurs in Orange County find their strengths, gain access to resources, and dream for the future. CIELO serves people throughout Orange County, with a focus on low-to-moderate income (LMI), women, immigrants, and BIPOC. CIELO aims to reduce opportunity inequality by providing clients with the resources or connections they wouldn’t otherwise have, but which are needed to launch a successful small business. By surrounding these hardworking, entrepreneurial-minded individuals with a team of experts dedicated to helping cultivate their skills and creativity, CIELO empowers them to achieve their entrepreneurial dreams. The main component of CIELO’s Entrepreneurship Program consists of our Small Business Start Up Program, and its Spanish equivalent INICIOS, a six-week training course for start up small businesses, with a new cohort of up to 50 clients happening four times a year. The first three weeks of each course are dedicated to our Roadmap for Entrepreneurship Success curriculum, where new entrepreneurs participate in the following: • Business development workshops: Covers topics like the basics of launching a small business, market/customer acquisition and research, accessing capital and business systems, green business practices, and upward mobility tools. • Marketing plan development: CIELO teaches the importance of finding the target market for a specific business by researching the market’s size, unique traits, and trends that relate to the demands for their business. • Financial training for small businesses, such as utilizing business loans, restructuring debt, and working with cash flow issues: We teach a basic understanding and knowledge of business finance which gives the entrepreneurs the ability to keep their business running smoothly. • Assistance in researching and applying for loans: Business loans for LMI and BIPOC entrepreneurs are sometimes challenging to find and apply for, so CIELO teaches how to identify unique issues that make it hard to get a small business loan, ways to overcome them and alternative sources of funding to finance their venture. The last three weeks of the course are dedicated to individualized one-on-one coaching for additional support after completion of the Roadmap curriculum. After clients complete the six-week course, they continue to work closely with our case manager, meeting at least monthly with our staff, until they launch their business. Our clients do not generally have the connections and resources to have a “finance guy” or “marketing team,” so we become their one-stop trusted business partner. When specific business-related needs arise, we workshop those obstacles in-house to find solutions or lean on one of our community partners. From legal experts to bookkeepers and more, over the years we’ve curated an extensive network of providers to help us quickly and directly meet the business needs of our clients. The second component of our program is our monthly workshop series. Offered in conjunction with a different community partner every month, these workshops are open to anyone and cover various business-related topics. While our goal is for as many entrepreneurs as possible to go through the cohort program, the monthly workshops serve as a funnel to connect more clients with the wraparound services offered through the start-up small business course. We also offer virtual services through our online classroom platform, Learning Cloud. Learning Cloud digitally mirrors our in-person services so that individuals can access these resources from wherever they are, and allows users to access all of the educational modules of CIELO’s Roadmap for Entrepreneurship Success, but they can go at their own pace, as it is user-directed.

Childcare Incubator Program

In conjunction with economic disparities, there is a significant need for childcare services among underserved communities in Orange County. According to the OC Community Indicators Report, only five percent of infants and toddlers under two have access to licensed daycare. That need is not being fulfilled by existing providers who tend to operate independently in a fragmented environment. In response, CIELO launched our Childcare Business Incubator with the goal of facilitating the creation of community-based childcare services while providing the owners of such services with meaningful work and compensation not otherwise available. CIELO’s Childcare Business Incubator offers education, guidance, and inspiration to primarily female participants on their road to entrepreneurial success through operation of an in-home childcare business. In partnership with First 5 OC and the Small Business Development Center, low-income Orange County residents – especially women, immigrants, and BIPOC – receive the comprehensive training and support they need to launch a childcare business that will provide income for themselves and their families while meeting the needs of their community. Through CIELO’s training program, aspiring in-home childcare business owners participate in an intensive six-week facilitated bootcamp (taught in English and Spanish) where they are challenged to consider many factors including the needs of parents and children, marketing/advertisement, payment options, and the process to secure necessary licensing, permits, and certifications. Ongoing coaching and workshops take place between the bootcamp and childcare business launch. Clients who attend all classes and complete the program will receive stipends between $500 - $5,000 to help cover startup costs of their childcare business, including the necessary fees for licenses and permits. CIELO’s Childcare Business Incubator incorporates proven strategies from our successful Entrepreneurship Program. Our vision is to create a network model wherein each childcare business will be owned and operated by an entrepreneur, and bolstered by CIELO, which will provide ongoing support with marketing, outreach, training, and back-office services. These in-home businesses will maintain the highest standards, including background checks, specialized trainings on childhood development, and licensing requirements by the Department of Social Services as a home-based small family childcare facility.