Mayor Horrigan is honored to annually update the residents of Akron with his State of the City address. He touches on the accomplishments from the previous year and relays focuses for the upcoming year. He gave his 2020 State of the City speech on February 26, 2020 at the John S. Knight Center. In his address, he had several calls to action in relation to the below initiatives, programs, and events. Please read more to find out how you can get involved and do your part! To read the full speech click here.
Full Term First Birthday
Advancing health equity is vital to strengthening and empowering Akron citizens and creating stronger neighborhoods. To further that objective and coordinate efforts to improve maternal and infant health, Mayor Horrigan created Full Term First Birthday (FTFB), in 2017. FTFB is an infant vitality initiative, with the mission to educate and inform Akron citizens of programs available in the community that promote healthy full term pregnancies and ensure every Akron child celebrates a first birthday. View the FTFB three-year strategic plan here.
The collaborative is a group of community organizations that are focused on removing barriers and providing wrap-around services to pregnant mothers who experience challenges in access to healthcare, housing, transportation and employment. FTFB’s three main priorities include: addressing structural racism and social determinants of health, reducing prematurity, and eliminating infant sleep-related deaths.
If you are part of an organization looking to get involved in the Full Term First Birthday infant vitality initiative, contact Tamiyka Rose, City of Akron Health Equity Ambassador, at (330) 375-2487 or [email protected].
Expectant mothers interested in enrolling in the initiative and learning more about the resources available can call 2-1-1 or visit https://www.scph.org/maternal-child-health.
Financial Empowerment Center
The Akron Financial Empowerment Center is a program of the City of Akron in partnership with United Way. The Akron Financial Empowerment Center provides financial coaching to individuals, helping them to acquire the skills to budget and save, develop healthy banking relationships and raise their credit scores.
Thousands of Akron households struggle with significant debt and lack of information and resources to help them better their financial prospects. By offering free, one-on-one financial counseling delivered by professionally trained coaches, the Financial Empowerment Center supports individuals and families in achieving their financial and personal goals. They focus on four main areas:
- credit score improvement
- debt reduction
- increasing savings and assets
- increasing banking access.
All financial coaching services, including credit report analysis, are provided free of charge to any adult living in Summit County regardless of income level.
So far, the Financial Empowerment Center, located on Kenmore Boulevard, has a total of 5 satellite locations, 946 clients, and has facilitated over 2,700 individual coaching sessions. Most importantly, these sessions, have now generated $1.3 million in reduced debt and increased savings for local residents.
If you are part of an organization looking to partner further with the Financial Empowerment Center please call 330-762-7601 or go to https://www.uwsummit.org/contact to send an email and find out more.
To see a list of locations, make an appointment, or find out more please visit: https://www.uwsummit.org/FEC.
Rubber City Match
Rubber City Match pairs new and expanding businesses with Akron’s top real estate opportunities, providing funding and technical assistance along the way. If you own a building in one of our Great Streets districts, you may apply to have your building marketed as a top property and be matched with vetted, quality businesses. If you are an entrepreneur, both established or aspiring, you may apply for grant funding for technical assistance, design and architectural services, and capital to help make your idea a reality. We are partnering with trusted small business lenders ECDI, ASIA, Inc., and HFLA Cleveland, to fund these projects, and where there are gaps in financing, the City of Akron is committing $100,000 in grants to help close the deal. Along the way, technical assistance will be provided by ecosystem partners Bounce, SBDC, and Akron Urban League to give participating entrepreneurs every shot at success.
The program goals include:
- Create a deep culture of entrepreneurship in Akron
- Build excitement around Great Street corridors
- Showcase and leverage retail demand to support small biz
- Engage property owners in corridor revitalization
- Cement government, philanthropy and lenders as active partners in Akron’s entrepreneurial ecosystem
- Create a more accessible, inclusive economy
Applications for Rubber City Match are open and available at www.rubbercitymatch.com. Committed building owners and entrepreneurs are invited to apply.
Bounce Innovation Hub
Akron is once again at the forefront of innovation and entrepreneurship, continually rethinking and reinventing itself to build a new innovation ecosystem right here where it all started. As Akron’s first open innovation hub, Bounce provides services and programs to help any and all with a mind for innovation to make their visions become reality. Bounce Innovation Hub was founded in January 2018 and serves northeast Ohio’s entrepreneurial and innovation community. Located in downtown Akron in a former B.F. Goodrich tire plant, the building comprises more than 300,000 square feet of coworking, creative, event and professional office space. Bounce currently offers entrepreneurial programs for tech and non-tech companies.
Bounce’s first floor, the Generator, is open to the public. It comprises 27,000 square feet, and includes coworking space and private offices; event and meeting space; The Workshop: A Creative Co-op; Remarkable Coffee and Cafe; and the state-of-the-art Esports Center.
In 2019, over 12,000 people visited Bounce - more than 6 times the number who visited the year before. Companies at Bounce provide more than 270 jobs, and they are on track to surpass their goal of 25 million dollars in annual startup revenue. Additionally, Bounce has added new programming and jobs specifically designed to support non-tech, minority, and female entrepreneurs and now, 50 percent of the client companies at Bounce are female or minority-owned.
To find out more about how you can get involved with Bounce, please visit https://bouncehub.org/.
