How We Began
BCSEP’s current success is attributable to two years of prior planning by a Focus Group comprising a wide cross section of the Battle Creek community leadership. The Program was launched in June 2006 aided by an initial grant from W. K. Kellogg Foundation and has enjoyed three years of success in Micro enterprise and entrepreneur development.

We facilitate educational empowerment through Micro-enterprise training as a focused strategy to promote business ownership among underserved segments and to help combat poverty.

Our Vision
The Core Vision of the BSEP is to reduce poverty by creating micro-enterprise self employment opportunities as an economic development strategy for building our community

What Is Microenterprise
A micro enterprise business in the U.S. is commonly defined as a sole proprietorship, partnership, or family business that has fewer than five employees, generally not having access to conventional commercial bank funding for various reasons and can be initially capitalized with under $35,000.

To date, the Program has provided entrepreneurial and self employment training opportunities for over 128 individuals, primarily of low income, using the highly successful First Step FastTrac Entrepreneur training model developed by the Ewing Kauffman Foundation of Kansas City.

The Program Core Target Groups
* The working poor
* Persons affected by discrimination
* Disabled persons
* Public Assistance recipients
* Women
* Recently unemployed persons
* Other underserved segments of the community

The BCSEP Program Story will continue in the next Website update where we discuss, what we do, strategies and growth into other communities.