New Initiatives Meet Changing
Needs of Rural Entrepreneurs

The REAP program strives to be on the cutting edge in the microenterprise field. REAP staff are proud of the new initiatives we offered in the past fiscal year and of those currently in research and development.

We increased scale with the REAP Hispanic Business Center by hiring Nancy Flock as a REAP Hispanic Business Specialist and by promoting Adriana Dungan as director of the Hispanic Business Center.

The REAP Online Lending System is an innovative service available to micro borrowers. The system was further piloted during FY 2008, and plans are in the works to rebuild the system in FY 2009.

We have also developed a new bookkeeping learning tool for entrepreneurs. Through funds from a WealthSpring Grant, the REAP Women’s Business Center enlisted Connie Harvey, owner of Efficiency Counts in Hastings, Nebraska, to help women business owners to succeed by creating tools to set up their bookkeeping system correctly. We will be developing a handy Checklist for staff to use when working with business owners.

REAP collaborates with other organizations and individuals to implement our work and for microenterprise development in general. New collaborations and those already in place are making a huge difference in reaching entrepreneurs in need of services.

The REAP program has a long history of being customer driven. Rural entrepreneurs are our customers. We will continue to listen to our customers and to research, develop and implement new initiatives that meet their needs. In 2009, we will continue the challenge of scaling up our services by continued development of our current model and through implementation of new initiatives.