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Helpful links for small businesses:
United States Small Business Administration
SBA Online
America's Small Business Development Center
ASBDC |
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Calendar Notes:
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August 2010 Score Workshops
Workshops
for Small Business Development
The SCORE
workshops are designed to help you "fill in the holes" of your knowledge
and to provide new ideas and perspectives for your business. Each
workshop delivers information to you quickly, with practical examples
and lots of discussion (laughter, too). Our workshop leaders are experienced
and successful business-people who will guide you through subjects
as diverse as business startups or Internet Marketing. Profit from
their experience!
View the workshop schedule for April by visiting SCORE's web site
at www.score-sandiego.org.
To make an appointment for business counseling, or for more information
on SCORE workshops or the SBA/SCORE Business Resource Center, call
SCORE at (619) 557-7272.
Proud Resource
Partner of the US Small Business Administration
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Navy Small Business Opportunity Conference
Small Business: The Foundation of our Economy Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow
August 17-18, 2010 -- San Diego Convention Center
The San Diego Chapter of NDIA (National Defense Industrial Association) and Navy co-hosts Head Quarters Marine Corps (Installations and Logistics), Marine Corps Systems Command and the Office of Small Business Programs proudly present the 22nd Annual Navy Gold Coast Small Business Opportunity Conference, also known as the "Gold Coast" conference. Since its inception more than 20 years ago, Gold Coast is co-hosted on a rotating basis by NAVSEA, NAVFAC, SPAWAR, NAVSUP, NAVAIR, and the US Marine Corps.
The purpose of Gold Coast is to provide a forum to educate, guide, and assist businesses, especially small businesses, in working with the government, primarily the Department of Defense. Attendance is not restricted to those who do business directly with the government, but open to all relevant businesses.
NDIA and the Marine Corps have once again collaborated to bring interesting and motivating speakers that will present topics of interest with regards to working with the government. Plan on attending informative and relevant general/plenary and break-out sessions. Visit more than 250 industry and government exhibitors along with dozens of posters containing company information and opportunities. As with any of these events, there are also plenty of opportunities for networking.
Though this is labeled as a "small business opportunity conference," large business participation is always welcome and encouraged. In fact, large businesses have actively participated over the years, both as exhibitors and through our sponsorship programs.
Click here to view the conference agenda.
For more information, visit www.navygoldcoast.org.
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San Diego Construction Employment Worse than a Year Ago
Carlos Rico, San Diego Daily Transcript
San Diego's construction employment dropped about 3,000 jobs in June compared to a year ago, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics latest data on the various metropolitan areas in the country.
In June, the San Diego-Carlsbad-San Marcos metro area reported 58,500 construction jobs, a decrease of 3,000 jobs, or 5 percent, from June 2009. The region ranks 133 out of 337 metropolitan areas in the United States.
"As a whole, the county was declining in 2009," said Ken Simonson, chief economist for the Associated General Contractors of America. "The worst was in (October) for San Diego (when there was 57,900 jobs). But since then, San Diego has seen an improvement."
Simonson pointed to funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act that are now finally being contracted out beyond highway and road projects.
"Money is now getting to transportation projects, wastewater projects, building renovations, alternative energy projects and military projects, and San Diego is seeing some of this," he said.
Although San Diego saw a decline in construction jobs, the county still ranked better than all but three of the 28 metro areas in California, including the Los Angeles-Long Beach-Glendale, Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, Santa Ana-Anaheim-Irvine and El Centro metro areas.
"San Diego is well ahead of the other metro areas," Simonson said.
From June 2009 to June 2010, the Los Angeles-Long Beach-Glendale metro area saw 15,900 jobs lost, from 118,200 to 102,300 jobs. This was a 13 percent change and the area ranked 286 in the United States.
The Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario metropolitan area lost 10,800 jobs when compared to a year ago, going down from 69,600 to 58,800 or a 16 percent change. This area ranked 316 nationally. 9,900 jobs vanished in the Santa Ana-Anaheim-Irvine area from 75,100 to 65,200 jobs. This amounted to a 13 percent change.
El Centro saw jobs go down from 1,600 to 1,200, a 25 percent change.
Looking at the entire country, construction employment declined in 285 out of 337 metropolitan areas between June 2009 and June 2010.
According to Simonson, this explains how weak construction employment is and how overall the demand for construction is outweighing the benefits of the stimulus package's $135 billion in construction-related investments.
"The overall lack of demand for new construction is hurting more than the stimulus is helping at this point," he said. "While more metropolitan areas have started adding construction jobs, most are still experiencing losses nearly four years after the construction downturn began."
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Grossmont Union High School District Selects New Superintendent
Ralf Swenson has been tentatively selected as the next superintendent of the Grossmont Union High School District contingent on successful contract negotiation, a positive community visit by the Governing Board to his current school district and further routine background checks. The selection was made at a Special Meeting of the Governing Board on June 29, 2010. The selection followed a comprehensive national search conducted by Dave Long & Associates Executive Search Services. Mr. Swenson expects to join the District full time in August 2010.
“Our Board is unanimous in our selection of Mr. Swenson. He is an exceptional educator with a passion for improving and enhancing educational opportunities for all secondary students, including Career Technical Education. He is also committed to building positive relationships with teacher leaders and staff across the District. We have confidence that Mr. Swenson will be a collaborative and student-centered leader who will help our schools and students succeed.” said School Board President Robert Shield.
Mr. Swenson has over 32 years of experience as a high school educator, most recently serving as the Superintendent of Nevada Joint Union High School District in Grass Valley, California for three years. He previously was in the Merced Union High School District where he served as principal of Golden Valley High School, a school he opened in 1994. He began his career as a social studies teacher and coach in North Dakota before coming to California in 1989.
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San Diego County Employment: Employment Down by 1,500 jobs Over the Month; and Down 13,300 Over the Year
Prepared by the State of California's Employment Development Department - Labor Market Information Division.
The unemployment rate in the San Diego County was 10.5 percent in June 2010, up from a
revised 10.1 percent in May 2010, and above the year-ago estimate of 10.0 percent. This
compares with an unadjusted unemployment rate of 12.2 percent for California and 9.6 percent
for the nation during the same period.
Between May 2010 and June 2010, total nonfarm employment declined by 1,200 and settled at
1,224,500 jobs. Agricultural employment decreased by 300 jobs, 3.0 percent.
- Government reported the greatest month-over decline, down 3,500 jobs. Federal
government (down 3,000) accounted for roughly 86 percent of the job losses in this
sector. Local government contracted by 300, while state government receded by 200
jobs.
- Educational and health services decreased by 1,500 jobs. Educational services (down
1,200) contributed to most job losses in this industry. Health care and social assistance
declined by 300 jobs.
- Four industries posted month-over job gains, including leisure and hospitality (up 2,000),
trade, transportation, and utilities (up 1,200), professional and business services (up
1,100), and other services (up 100). Information and mining and logging recorded no
change in employment levels over the month.
Between June 2009 and June 2010, total nonfarm employment declined by 12,500 jobs, or 1.0
percent. Agricultural employment decreased by 800 jobs, or 7.6 percent.
- Manufacturing reported the greatest year-over decline, down 4,100 jobs. Durable goods
(down 3,500) accounted for roughly 85 percent of the job losses in this sector.
Nondurable goods contracted by 600 jobs.
- Eight of 10 other nonfarm industries posted job declines over the year, including trade,
transportation, and utilities (down 3,500), construction (down 3,000), and financial
activities (down 2,600) to name a few.
- Two sectors recorded year-over job growth, including professional and business
services (up 2,400) and educational and health services (up 2,000).
For more information, contact Joe Briceno at (760) 639-3760.
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Snapshot
on the National Defense Industrial Association, San Diego Chapter (NDIA-SD)
The National Defense Industrial Association, San Diego Chapter (NDIA-SD) is dedicated to uphold the vision and mission of the national organization with a focus of bringing together the defense community of the city and county of San Diego in an effort to advocate new technologies, promote a government-industry national security team, and provide a legal and ethical forum for the exchange of information between industry and Government on National Security issues.
NDIA-SD's Mission:
- Advocate: Cutting Edge Technology
- Promote: A vigorous, responsive Government/ Industry National Security team
- Provide: Legal & Ethical forum for exchange of information between Industry & Government
- Improve: The local military community
NDIA traces its history to the American Defense Preparedness Association (ADPA), founded in 1919, and the National Security Industrial Association (NSIA), founded in 1944. The new NDIA founded in March 1997 is a non-partisan, non-profit, educational association.
For more information about NDIA-SD, visit their website http://www.ndia-sd.org.
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Few Local Districts Joined Second Round of Stimulus Race
By Emily Alpert, Voice of San Diego
If California wins in the second round of Race to the Top, a competition between states for more school stimulus money, only a handful of school districts in San Diego County would get a share.
California was picked as one of 19 finalists for the competition Tuesday, making it eligible for up to $700 million. The state didn't win in the first round of the competition but tried again, using a different approach. It tapped seven superintendents from different school districts to create its new application.
School districts from around the state could then choose to sign on to the plan. In San Diego County, only six out of 42 school districts did so: Bonsall Union Elementary, Coronado Unified, Del Mar Union Elementary, Rancho Santa Fe Elementary, San Ysidro Elementary and South Bay Union Elementary.
However, a number of independent area charter schools are in the running. The High Tech High schools are in, as are All Tribes, Arroyo Paseo, College Preparatory Middle, Darnall, EJE Elementary and EJE Middle, Explorer Elementary, Iftin, Guajome Park Academy, Tubman, Health Sciences High and Middle College, Helix High, Keiller, KIPP Adelante, two local schools linked to Magnolia Science Academy, North County Trade Tech High, O'Farrell, River Valley Charter, San Diego Cooperative Charter School and Urban Discovery Academy.
Many school districts have shied from the race, which requires specific reforms in exchange for the money, including the controversial step of linking teacher evaluation to test scores. San Diego Unified was the largest school district in the state to sit it out.
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San Diego's Refugee Brain Gain
By Adrian Florido, Voice of San Diego
The sixth floor conference room at the City Heights Center was redolent of falafel and baklava and Indian flatbread Wednesday evening, as well as abuzz with chatter -- listen closely.
Homing in on the conversation of Mohammad Khajehpour, you would have heard, in cautious but steady English, this: "I would like to get into the workforce. I had to leave Iran to save my son from arrest because he converted to Christianity. I am a chemist."
Or this from Zina Jassim: "I am an architect, but I will take any entry-level job."
Or this: "I was a victim of the U.N. bombing in Baghdad. I was working as a communications engineer. I woke up five days later in a hospital in Germany."
Ibrahim Matee still bears the scar from the wound inflicted on the day he was whisked from Iraq to Germany to save his life, never to return to his country. It runs from the back of his neck, along his left jaw line to the front of his chin, and evokes, he said, final memories of the torn country he left behind.
Matee, 50, arrived in San Diego as a refugee in 2008, but has been unable to find work as an engineer. Instead he relies on $800 in monthly welfare income, the help of his two children aged 22 and 21, who work part time at a car wash and as an insurance biller, and on a small stipend he receives for teaching a weekly Arabic class at the Grossmont Adult School in El Cajon.
They are three of the more than 4,100 refugees from around the world who arrived in San Diego County in 2009, a number that social service providers say makes San Diego the refugee capital of the United States.
Many of them were highly trained and successful professionals before war, political repression or threats against their families forced them to flee their countries to save their lives, at the expense of their livelihoods.
They arrived in San Diego with expectations for resuming their previous careers and found an economic landscape unmerciful to Americans, let alone refugees with few professional connections and, often, less-than-perfect English. Many have taken low-paying and entry-level jobs at convenience stores and at fast food restaurants as they try to rebuild a semblance of their past lives.
A few dozen of them arrived at a downtown City Heights office building by bus, car and foot Wednesday evening to network with local company representatives and other refugees at a mixer hosted by the San Diego Refugee Forum. Dressed in their best business attire, they came hoping the connections they made Wednesday might help them land jobs as the economy improves. San Diego's Brain Gain - Images by Sam Hodgson For full screen mode, click the lower right corner of the slideshow player.
Before the start of the program, Radha Adhikari kept to herself at a fold-up table with little flags from around the world sticking out of a jar in the center.
She was reserved as she spoke of her past.
She traveled here with visions of the opportunity to work in the law, as a social advocate or in the nonprofit world and take up some of the causes that motivated her fight against the injustices she witnessed and experienced as a refugee back home.
Instead, Adhikari, whose longing eyes, squared glasses and long black hair lend to her bookish demeanor, leaves her City Heights apartment at 6:15 each morning and rides the bus two hours to Escondido, where she works shifts at a Cinnabon at a mall. "It is an entry-level job," she said. "But it is better to get into the workforce and help the economy improve."
On Wednesday morning, she traveled two hours to work, but asked to leave early so she could climb back on the bus home to attend the mixer.
She arrived in San Diego in March. For 18 years, she lived in a refugee camp in Nepal, where her Hindu family had taken refuge from religious persecution in neighboring Bhutan, the predominantly Buddhist South Asian country where she was born.
While in Nepal, she took leave of the camp to study in Katmandu, the capital, earning master's degrees in international and refugee law and becoming among the few voices for women's rights in the country, publishing a book and articles on the subject.
"I am a law graduate," she said. "I worked as a teacher and at a women's rights" organization. But she was not allowed to practice law because she was not a citizen of Nepal. When the United Nations began processing Bhutanese refugees for resettlement in 2006, she was eager to apply, and late last year learned she had been granted refugee status in the United States.
She still hopes to find a job in social services.
Adhikari's story repeats itself in iterations by the thousands across San Diego County, and social service providers who work with refugees say many highly trained refugee professionals like Matee and Adhikari who have arrived in recent years have been unprepared for the dearth of professional opportunity that has greeted them.
Stories circulate within the refugee resettlement community of families that have decided to test their luck and return to the countries they left to reclaim their abandoned careers.
Catholic Charities, the largest of San Diego's four refugee resettlement agencies, has 980 active cases of refugees trying to find jobs. The agency created a specialized employment team to relieve the burden placed on overwhelmed caseworkers, said Mike Buchanan, who directs the effort.
"That number grows every day as the refugee population in San Diego grows," Buchanan said, driven mostly by the steady and growing stream of Iraqis to El Cajon in recent years.
And the refugee professionals among them are among the last to be considered for jobs by professional firms. "
A lot of these companies' first priority is rehiring the people they've laid off," said Jonathan Lucus, a coordinator for RefugeeWorks, a national organization that helps place refugees. "You've got to make employers interested and you've got to stand out in the crowd. That's difficult for refugees if they don't speak perfect English or only have international experience."
It is even more difficult for refugees whose professions require licensing before they can practice. Iraqi doctors, engineers, architects and dentists who have arrived in recent years have had difficulty navigating the process for recertification to practice their professions.
Basman Kraidi was a dentist before fleeing Baghdad with his family amid threats. After arriving in San Diego and finding few opportunities to work, he moved with his wife to New Jersey where he found a job teaching dental assistants.
But the cost of living on their own was too high, and a month ago, they returned to El Cajon to rejoin Kraidi's mother and father, a former architecture professor who in San Diego is first looking for a job in management before trying to find work in his profession.
As Kraidi studies for dental certification, both he and his wife, Zina Jassim, are looking for part-time jobs, entry-level jobs in any field that will help them make ends meet.
"We will take any job," Kraidi said.
In the meantime, many refugees, like Mohammad Khajehpour, the chemist from Iran, are patching together income from temporary and side jobs. While he gets credentialed to teach high school science, Khajehpour is tutoring high school students in chemistry.
He remembers the fateful day when he learned that police had raided the home where his son was attending Christian services in secret. Within days of getting him released from jail, he packed up his life and fled to Turkey, leaving behind his job as a commercial chemist.
"I have to take some few more tests, and in the future, God willing, I will become a teacher," he said.
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Connectory.com™ Member Spotlight
Connectory.com is the East County EDC's award-winning flagship project that began
as an East San Diego County resource and has expanded to become the
premier business-to-business information tool for the United States.
The
Connectory focuses on primary industry/technology companies and their
suppliers of goods and services. It combines the unparalleled speed
and navigation capability of the Internet with a high quality company
database that focuses on company capabilities and capacities at every
level of the supply chain -- all at no cost to the company.
To post your company's profile on the Connectory, go to www.Connectory.com and click on "Profile your Company."
This
section of the newsletter is dedicated to shed light on a Connectory
member and feature its services and capabilities. This month's spotlight
is on:
StreetArt Impressions, Inc.
Name: StreetArt Impressions, Inc.
Address: 1661 Foss Road, Alpine, CA 91901
Phone: (619) 445-9023
Website: www.streetartimpressions.com
About: StreetArt Impressions, Inc. specializes in "Stamped Asphalt", a unique process designed to replicate the appearance of hand-laid brick, slate or stone. The colorful coatings beautify and fortify the asphalt concrete surfaces.
Unique Capabilities:
- Stamped Asphalt
- Earth Moving
- Excavating
- Grading
- Trenching
- Asphalt Paving
- Road Restoration
- Land Leveling
Decorative Stamped Asphalt is a unique process which produces a hand laid-brick or stone surface effect without actually laying the brick or stone. This innovative process uses asphalt concrete as its base. The asphalt is heated and a template overlayed to imprint the design of choice. A customer's choice of an acrylic or epoxy colored coating is applied to beautify and reinforce the surface. A sweeping driveway can be stamped with a stone, brick or herringbone pattern to simulate more costly concrete pavers.
Cost - Decorative Stamped Asphalt is the most economical and low-maintenance decorative pavement surfacing system on the market today. The cost is substantially lower than with hand laid bricks or stamped concrete.
Durability - Stamped Asphalt is a continuous, waterproof surface which resists weed growth and inhibits the migration of water to the base thereby reducing the possibility of base failure. The acrylic and epoxy colored coatings used reduce the effects of weathering from water, freeze-thaw cycles and sun (ultra violet exposure).
Easy Maintenance - Decorative Stamped Asphalt is easily repairable and requires virtually no maintenance. The patterns can be changed and easily re-coated.
Quick Installation - Stamped Asphalt can be installed very quickly ( as much as 10 times faster than cement bricks) resulting in much less disruption to traffic and other activities. Decorative Stamped Asphalt can be applied over existing asphalt that is in good condition. The surface is simply heated and imprinted.
Elaborate Decorative Patterns - Decorative Stamped Asphalt makes it practical to create embossed art work in the surface. This can be done quickly and easily and creates a whole new opportunity for decorative pavement designers. The distinctive designs create a dramatic and colorful visual impact!
Affiliations:
- Latino Builders, Inc.
- Service Disabled Veteran Owned Business
- Western Regional Master Builders Association
To
view StreetArt Impressions, Inc's
full
Connectory profile, click here
or go to http://connectory.com/search.aspx and type the company name in the search box. If
you are a Connectory member and would like your company featured in
this section, please contact Erica Asbury at (619) 258-3670 or email erica.asbury@eastcountyedc.org.
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A
Newsletter from all of us at the East County EDC
Visit
www.eastcountyedc.org
to view the East County EDC website and our monthly newsletter
from the East County EDC. There's always news you can use in this
informative publication. Visit today and visit often for up to date
information.
Created
and edited by Erica Asbury, East County EDC
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