‘Avanzar Business Accelerator Program’ adds a new free online resource to their platform

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (KRDO)--New data shows there are now more than 7,000 Latino-owned businesses in the Pikes Peak Region, and in Colorado Springs there is now a program to help Hispanic entrepreneurs get the resources they need to thrive. 

The goal of the Avanzar Business Accelerator is to increase the number of Hispanic-owned businesses in the Pikes Peak Region. Usually, Avanzar holds in-person workshops to help Latino entrepreneurs, but now they're adding free online seminars.

"There's a lot of anxiety around starting a business we do find that very much in the Hispanic community that seems to be a little more pronounced," said Zach Barker, the Program Director for Avanzar.

Within the last year, the number of Hispanic females and Latino-owned businesses has grown tremendously across the Pikes Peak Region.

"With female Hispanic entrepreneurs being the fastest growing segment of entrepreneurship. We want to make sure that we're providing education resource sources as well as community accesses to make sure that we're supporting those individuals as they grow their businesses," said Barker.

The Colorado Springs Hispanic Chamber of Commerce estimates as many as 2,000 more Hispanic businesses will open up this year. 

"So the point of the Avanzar program was for us to simplify each of those steps, to focus on first things first, to make sure that we could establish the idea of the business, prove that there's a market for the business, help create a financial model, and then we can go and pursue the things that are a little more daunting," added Barker.

The sessions for Avanzar are done every 8-10 weeks and now folks will be able to go online whenever they want and get that information for free. 

"Not everybody can afford 50 bucks or 100 bucks or $1,000. And so making it accessible to you on your time, at your space, at a price that everybody can afford, and then complementing that with live training, direct support, mental health care to really activate everybody in our community," said Barker.

Each training session takes a minimum of three months. For more information on Avanzar, you can visit their official website.