news-record.com

WENTWORTH – Project GATE (Growing America Through Entrepreneurship) has been launched in North Carolina.

Funded by the U.S. Department of Labor, GATE provides training and coaching to help laid-off rural workers start their own small businesses.

GATE is not a grant program. It is a scholarship program with up to 750 scholarships likely to be awarded in North Carolina.

“This program has the potential to do far more than provide a source of income for individuals who’ve lost jobs,” said Billy Ray Hall, president of the N.C. Rural Economic Development Center. “It can help us build homegrown economies in struggling communities all across the state.”

In North Carolina, the project is a cooperative effort between the N.C. Department of Commerce, N.C. Community College System, Employment Security Commission of North Carolina, North Carolina REAL Enterprises, local JobLink Career Centers and the NC Rural Center.

Eight community colleges, including Rockingham Community College, have been selected as primary GATE sites. At RCC, the Small Business Center in the Bishopric Lifelong Learning Center, is partnering with the JobLink Career Center to provide GATE services.

Services include assessment of entrepreneurial skills, business and entrepreneurship courses, one-on-one business counseling, introduction to other resource professionals, and help applying for a microenterprise loan upon completion of a workable business plan.

Applicants to the program must be dislocated workers — those who lost their job because of a business closing or layoff — and be eligible for the Workforce Investment Act (WIA) program.

For information about the program, contact Debi Joyce at 342-4261, ext. 2349, visit the local JobLink Career Center at the NC Employment Security Commission in Wentworth, go online to www.ncprojectgate.org, or call 1-877-9NC-GATE.