As a master’s degree student in the University at Buffalo’s School of Architecture and Planning, Juweria Dahir studied the chasm between workforce programs and low-income populations in Buffalo.
While serving as the City of Buffalo's external affairs manager, Dahir got to work with more than 500 block clubs, identifying and implementing neighborhood development projects.
Her new job won’t just be an extension of that work. It will seek to add new entrepreneurship opportunities for Buffalo residents who otherwise might not get the chance.
Dahir has been named executive director of EforAll Buffalo, the newly established local office of Entrepreneurship for All, a national nonprofit that offers free programs to small business and entrepreneurs.
“To be an entrepreneur sometimes you need to drop everything and take a big risk,” Dahir said. “If you are living paycheck to paycheck near the poverty line, you can’t take that big risk.”
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The structured programming will seek out those people in Buffalo and help them turn their ideas into enterprise. It will place a particular focus on ethnic minorities and women.
“This is important to me because it gives people the opportunity to dream big,” Dahir said. “If you come committed and passionate about something, we’ll give you the support you need to achieve your goals.”
Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus Inc. is partnering with EforAll to launch its programming in Buffalo. KeyBank has signed on as a financial sponsor.
EforAll’s flagship program is a twice-a-year, 12-week accelerator initiative that will help entrepreneurs as they build their businesses, including classes on accounting, finance, insurance and legal issues.
EforAll will host twice-a-year pitch contests that identify and spotlight local entrepreneurs.
Buffalo entrepreneurs also will be eligible for Entrepreneurs Forever, a professionally moderated peer-to-peer network that meets every month.
Dahir took place in the Western New York Prosperity Fellowship program while at UB and is on the board of H.E.A.L International, a Buffalo-based nonprofit. She was born in East Africa, grew up in Switzerland and the United Kingdom and moved to Western New York in 2013 with her husband, a Buffalo native.
She said her previous experiences exposed her both to progress nodes in the city and the many neighborhoods that feel cut off from any sense of resurgence.
People in those communities are working tirelessly, she said. But they need help.
“The pandemic amplified critical racial and gender gaps in the ways we provide opportunities,” she said. ‘EforAll is about creating a structured entrepreneurial ecosystem that gives people opportunities to grow and succeed.”
