By Destiny Allen & Michelle Harati

This Small Business Week, we are highlighting how the Community Navigator Pilot Program, administered by the Small Business Administration, is investing in local and national partnerships with trusted organizations to reduce the barriers entrepreneurs face in accessing critical support. Partners work with small business owners across the country, including veterans, women, people with disabilities, and those from rural places and communities of color.

Meet three entrepreneurs of color who have made meaningful and dream-fulfilling strides on their small business journeys, thanks in part to the SBA's Community Navigator Pilot Program which LISC is helping implement. Each business person has connected with a CBO or community business organization that has connected them with invaluable know-how and access to flexible growth capital - the support system that no small enterprise can go without.

In collaboration with the Walmart Foundation, LISC announced funding to help eight community-based nonprofits increase access to healthy, affordable food in under-resourced communities. Located primarily across the Southeast region, grantees will undertake efforts ranging from farmer-led urban agriculture to mobile food markets to the establishment of a community food policy council.

Not really a top ten, because we heard and told so many great stories this year—of challenges overcome and impact made—that it would be impossible to pick that few. But here is a selection of our favorites from 2022 (okay, ten) in words, pictures and social media characters. They help narrate some of what happened over the past 12 months, and we think they're too good to miss!

To mark Hispanic/Latinx Heritage Month, four LISCers with roots in Latin America shared their reflections on the relationship between their heritage and their commitment to community development and social justice. Hear what they have to say in the videos that follow.

One in three Americans has a criminal record, many of which reflect dropped charges or fines their holders simply couldn't afford to pay. In Greenville, MS, where far too many people, especially Black residents, can't pursue their goals because of barriers created by their records, LISC and a coalition of partners launched an expungement program to help job- and education-seekers get those charges and fines dismissed. It's part of a movement to upend the criminalization of poverty and help people advance on the path to wellbeing and financial stability, in Greenville and beyond.