Community Economic Development
Ansar Services is engaged in developing and applying innovative approaches to the creation of economic and business opportunities within low income and underserved communities within the DMV. The overall social well-being of all of our communities is closely related to the financial and economic well-being of its residents. This continues to represent a significant challenge in many African-American and other ethnic minority communities. Some reports have indicated that as many as one quarter of African Americans live in communities that are characterized as highly impoverished.
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Challenges
The challenges related to community economic well-being is expected to increase over the next few years. Rapid changes now underway in the US and global economy as a result of advanced automation, such as Artificial Intelligence, are projected to further adversely impact job and career opportunities for many African Americans, who are among those most likely to be disproportionately impacted. Even today, many minority youths living in urban communities increasingly find their employment opportunities limited to part-time and contract work.
Partnerships and Collaborations
Ansar Services is working, in partnership and evolving collaborations, with other nonprofit and entrepreneurial organizations, to implement mechanisms for social and economic investments to meets the current and emerging challenges impacting underserved communities in the DMV. This includes providing Business Incubation and related services to help support and encourage both young and minority entrepreneurs. We are particularly interested in those venture ideas and concepts that have the potential to result in social and economic benefits within historically low income and underserved minority communities.
Progressive Approach
We are proponents of a progressive approach in the transformation of business ideas from concepts to implementation and launch, through a set of principles and practices called Lean Start-up. This innovative start-up business approach has proven effective in developing, testing, validating, and refining business start-up models and venture concepts; as well as their associated revenue streams. The Lean Start-up approach, applied systemically, can accelerate both idea generation and innovation. It enables the transformation of such ideas into viable, tested business concepts to a stage where they have demonstrated viability and are ready for Launch. Such progressive processes serve as effective mechanisms that can have a significant affect on the likelihood of success for such ventures and, in turn, on the communities being served.