I have been incredibly proud for all of the work the Puente has done through our partnership and collaboration with the MI Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and the selfless volunteers that have been a part of the MI-HCA Advisory Council for the last three years.
We’ve gotten a little press in recent weeks. Something that is so difficult to summarize are the relationships we’ve built and the funders that saw potential in our passion!
Latino contractors seek bigger piece of southwest Detroit’s building boom
– Bridge Magazine, Article by Martina Guzman
New Group Helps Hispanic Contractors Compete For Southwest Detroit Construction Work
– Deadline Detroit
I would personally like to thank the City of Detroit, especially the Housing & Redevelopment Department (HRD) Team and the Office of Immigrant Affairs for their trust in me and the Puente Team. The main funder of the Bilingual Lead Abatement Training has been the Erb Family Foundation who facilitated additional flexible funding by the Community Foundation of Southeastern Michigan and the United Community Housing Coalition. Through their support, despite the pandemic, we were able to successfully train and certify 29 contractors as Lead Abatement Supervisors and Workers over three cohorts that ran in February, March, & October. The MI-HCA has now certified the ONLY immigrant, Spanish-speaking Lead Supervisors in the State of Michigan. It was a lot of work, but it was so worth it! Looking forward to what is to come.
The networking events and workshops for the 148 MI-HCA members in 2020 were made possible by our sponsoring MI-HCA member partners:
Comerica BankAlliance Catholic Credit Union5/3 BankO’Brien Constructionand others
