The New Growth Women’s Business Center is a new resource for rural entrepreneurs in all stages of business development and growth. It focuses on the power and potential of women to employ themselves, provide jobs for others, and build their local economies and communities.

New Growth Women’s Business Center! Open House events March 8-12, 2021, across 15 counties in Missouri and Kansas will celebrate women in business. They will also launch a new rural resource for all entrepreneurs, the New Growth Women’s Business Center.

APPLY BY MARCH 10. Launch U is a proven one-on-one, six week course for getting businesses going and growing. Participants put their plans together with intensive guidance and support from business counselors, other entrepreneurs, and experts that every business needs to consult for legal, financial and other questions.

West Central Missouri Community Action Agency (West Central) and the Missouri Rural Health Association (MRHA) seek volunteer drivers to help with healthcare rides in the region. Drivers receive a mileage reimbursement of $.80 per loaded mile, volunteer insurance coverage, flexible schedules, and training as HealthTran drivers.

The U.S. Small Business Administration announced rural west central Missouri will soon operate one of the nation’s newest Women’s Business Centers. To be based in El Dorado Springs, Missouri, the New Growth Women’s Business Center will serve 15 counties: 13 in Missouri and two in Kansas.

Global Entrepreneurship Week is an international celebration of the innovators and job creators who launch startups and bring ideas to life. Founded by the Kauffman Foundation in 2008, it has since expanded to more than 160 countries.

The U.S. Small Business Administration has awarded one of 30 national microenterprise assistance grants to West Central Missouri Community Action Agency. The one-year, $98,000 award will support West Central’s work with affiliate community development corporation

There is power in making your place, your hometown, a wonderful place to live. This may be obvious, but quality of life is often an afterthought in the economic development work of growing jobs and businesses.

CAUTION: This article starts with a platitude, and then it hits you with reality. You’ll be glad you read it, because you will find a way to make a difference. Platitude (cliché truism): If you give someone a fish, you will feed them for the day. If you teach someone...

Raydonna Biles makes lunch for her son every day. It keeps them both healthy. “I cook better for him than I would for myself alone. … Last time I went to the doctor, the doctor said, ‘Keep doing what you’re doing.’ My blood sugar was down. I’d lost weight.”

The global pandemic of 2020 has made starting and building a small business in west central Missouri even more difficult. Now a regional effort to develop micro loan financing for rural entrepreneurs is gaining the steam it needs to help local businesses get going and...

Rides to Health and Wealth is a collaborative west central Missouri effort to build thriving people and places by increasing access to healthcare and community services using the HealthTran ride scheduling and resourcing platform. Rides to Health and Wealth...