Sunshine Enterprises Celebrates Landmark Goal Across the Chicagoland Area: Helping Start 205 NEW Businesses
Joel Hamernick (center), our Executive Director interacting with rising entrepreneurs.
Q & A: An interview with Joel Hamernick, the President of Sunshine Gospel Ministries and the Executive Director of Sunshine Enterprises, and a longtime resident of Chicago's Woodlawn neighborhood. Joel also serves on the boards of Emerald South and Chicago Fellowship.
Sunshine Enterprises serves rising entrepreneurs across the Chicagoland area, helping them start or grow their businesses with resources, training, and more.
Q: Why did Sunshine Enterprises create the goal of helping 200 New Businesses start?
A: Sunshine Gospel Ministries initially established a goal of creating 200 jobs on 61st Street. The motivation was to see work opportunities return to our community, especially along the commercial corridors of 61st and 63rd Street. As we got started, we realized that our community is full of energetic, entrepreneurially minded people operating businesses that are often unseen, and as a result, both the entrepreneur and the business are undervalued.
We shifted our target from 200 jobs to 200 businesses. This shift in focus allowed us to pay attention to leaders and problem solvers in our community, equip them to grow their business through Sunshine Enterprises' Community Business Academy (CBA), and pursue their dreams. With more than 1,000 graduates of the program and roughly a 50% in-business rate, we are delighted to have grown far past our original vision.
Q: Why is it essential for Chicago to foster entrepreneurship in minority communities?
A: The economy in Chicago is in constant evolution. Unfortunately, for our black and brown communities, it has caused a great deal of suffering. With the exodus of the steel mills, stockyards, and manufacturing base in the 1970s and 80s, the base of employment accessible to the South and West Sides largely evaporated. Nothing has been done at scale to reverse this trend in the past 50 years.
Today the global economy is shifting toward self-employment and "gig" work. Of course, this pathway to income and wealth generation has downsides, but one enormous upside is removing barriers to employment. This is easily recognizable in the percentage of Uber and Lyft drivers that are from these communities.
Nationally, as well as in Illinois, 92% of businesses have five or fewer employees. These "micro-businesses" provide 50% of employment nationally. They also represent much of what we find that brings beauty and vitality to local communities. Ice cream shops, pet stores, and small local artisan shops are a delight to have present. These are the kinds of businesses that create local living economies. We can identify and support entrepreneurs at scale in our most disinvested communities leading to income, wealth, beauty, and public safety!
Q: What's the next BIG goal for Sunshine Enterprises?
A: Our next big goal is the development of a facility for operations. We hope to house our growing staff and simultaneously provide many entrepreneurs the opportunity to work in an affordable, beautiful, functional setting.