COVID-19 is a wakeup call for our region. We must address long-standing racial inequities as we respond to the crisis.

In Program Year 2019 (July 1, 2019 – June 30, 2020) we served 41,069 people, including 1,365 young people (age 16-24). We also served 1,735 businesses, including 413 we had not worked with before. Those numbers only hint at the unthinkable challenges our communities and systems faced this year—a global pandemic that took lives and upended livelihoods and had an unequal impact on Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC), and immigrants and refugees. From infection rates to employment rates, those most at risk were most impacted.

We begin the next program year in a substantially different place than from last year, even than from a few months ago. The health and economic impacts of COVID-19 have created massive disruptions to the economy and created a new reality for workers, the unemployed, and small businesses.