The city of Greensboro is considering a $35,000 matching grant to support Ethnosh, but the proposal is currently up in the air. Do you support the grant?
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Tell us why or why not in the comments. We’ll publish the results in the next print issue Triad City Beat.
[Photo: Manny and Margarita Delgado of Manny’s Cafe at an Ethnosh event last summer. By Eric Ginsburg]
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I am a fan of what this program stands for as well as those who have created it. They seem like nice folks. That said, since their service is a socially conscious riff on for profit services like Groupon and Living Social, they might want to consider similar revenue streams as a primary source of their funding.
I’m hoping the city will put its money where its mouth is. If you want to attract a younger professional class Greensboro needs more things like Ethnosh. The organizers aren’t making any money; they’re doing it as a cultural bridge to generate more relationships between immigrant-owned businesses and the community at large. It creates more revenue by getting new customers for locally-owned businesses. And they’re doing it in an affordable way! The $5 ticket price is cheaper than a meal at McDonalds and and healthier, too. It’s a mistake to think of it as a program just for immigrants. It’s about the whole community benefiting. Ultimately I hope that would include people facing challenges of hunger and poverty, too.
As a local non/profit working to make Greensboro a more welcoming community for all people, including refugees and immigrants, Ethnosh is close to Church World Service’s hearts. Yes it is a unique and fun way to support the local international food scene, but from our perspective it’s part of a bigger picture than those individual restaurants. The city’s support of Ethnish would be a recognition that this city’s diversity has value. When cities lift up diversity as an asset rather that a burden, it benefits everyone. As a local non profit serving newly arrived refugees, we know that a city that values cultural diversity is one that is safer and more welcoming to our clients. I hope the city takes a step back to see Ethnosh as part of a larger context with a positive impact that extends far beyond the restaurant owners it works with.
It’s not that I am against this program particularly. I think it’s a fine idea, actually, and one that should be supported by the community.
I think that the city as a whole needs to get away from pumping tax dollars into private enterprise, though. DGI is funded by tax dollars to almost zero provable results. The civil rights museum has been funded largely by loans from the city and yet most of the people I talk to have either never been there and have no plans to go, or have been and have no plans to go again and actually recommend people to not go there. The city is supporting poor ideas, bad ideas, and terrible ideas, all while slashing department budgets and screaming about a recession.
They need to focus on fixing the city budgets and using their money for the citizens, all of them, rather than special interests.