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AAMBP Celebrates Three Years
Posted on Dec 14 2019
Since its founding in September 2016, the Austin Area Minority Business Project (AAMBP) has been devoted to reducing legal barriers for immigrant and minority entrepreneurs in Austin, MN. Currently, AAMBP works with around 25 small businesses. The project is a collaboration between the Development Corporation of Austin, the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota (ILCM), Hispanic Advocacy and Community Empowerment through Research, and the Ballard Spahr pro bono team. AAMBP provides a variety of services including a variety of legal services for both business- and immigration-related needs, education, and longitudinal research and evaluation.
Staff Attorney Sara Karki heads ILCM’s involvement with AAMBP. She has worked with the project since the beginning, as she was already working in ILCM’s Worthington office. Sara believes that many people don’t even know that AAMBP exists, and wants people to know that ILCM is there to help people with both immigration and business matters.
Sara sees AAMBP as an important part of ILCM’s overall mission, and noted, “We don’t just get people legal status. We try to advance good immigration policies, and also to make the lives of immigrant families better.” AAMBP helps promote financial independence and stability for immigrant communities through business ownership. “Immigrants are very entrepreneurial, and have been for centuries,” Sara said.
Many ILCM clients have business ideas and entrepreneurial instincts, and in Austin, AAMBP is there to help them navigate the layers of bureaucracy that may stand in their way. “A lot of business owners don’t realize how much red tape there is,” Sara said, “and Ballard Spahr is able to help them. [Business owners can] have an attorney on their side to help level the playing field, whatever barriers there may be.”
AAMBP celebrated its third anniversary with a tour of three associated businesses: K’Nyaw Grocery (404 1st Street NW), the Sudanese Community International Market (501 1st St NW, pictured above), and 1910 Fresh Mexican Kitchen (507 1st St NW). These three businesses are a testament to the diversity of people and businesses involved with AAMBP.
Looking to the future, Sara Karki is interested in exploring other models of economic development. She also hopes to have more bicultural, bilingual staff involved with AAMBP and ILCM in Austin to ensure the needs of immigrant communities are being best met.
“It’s been a pretty cool project,” Sara said, “let’s see how many more people we can help through the next two years and more.”