Suazo Business Center, traditionally focused on Latinos, gets $600K grant to expand services

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Suazo Business Center received a $600,000 KeyBank grant to help it expand its offerings.
Suazo has traditionally aided the Latino community and the grant will help it expand bilingual courses and online resources.
KeyBank's donation is perhaps the largest it has made in Utah, according to a company rep.

SALT LAKE CITY — Suazo Business Center traditionally aids members of Utah's Latino community in honing their business acumen to create and build businesses.

Services have typically been offered in Spanish, though that has been changing, and immigrants have been among the key recipients of assistance as they forge a place in Utah.

A $600,000 grant from KeyBank will help Salt Lake City-based Suazo expand its offerings to serve a larger client base, including, perhaps, the children of some of the original recipients of assistance. KeyBank and Suazo officials gathered Wednesday to formally announce the grant, with some describing the occasion as a milestone for the nonprofit organization.

"I'm passionate that what we do here at the Suazo Center matters," said Howard Headlee, a member of the Suazo Business Center board of directors and president of the Utah Bankers Association. "People pursue their dreams here, and your donation today is going to play a big role in a lot of dreams in this community."

Drew Yergenson, Utah market president for KeyBank, said the grant is about fomenting growth in the state. The grant from the KeyBank Foundation, the philanthropic arm of the bank, is the largest single donation KeyBank in Utah has provided in its 15 years of business, he said.

"As we try to think about helping Utah grow, you've got to serve communities that need help. I think the Latino community is a large part of our local economy. We want to see them grow," Yergenson said.

He stressed Suazo's role since its founding in 2002 in helping some 10,000 clients launch around 5,000 new businesses.

"That means more families building stability, more small businesses strengthening our local economy and more people achieving sustainable employment," he said.

KeyBank officials believe opportunity "should be accessible, not limited by language, schedule, transportation or geography, and that's why this partnership is so special to us. It reflects our commitment to investing in education, workforce development, stronger communities," Yergenson said.

The funds will be provided to Suazo in $200,000 increments over three years. Lorena Riffo-Jenson, chairman of the Suazo board, said the money will be used, in part, to expand online offerings to serve those who aren't able to travel to the organization's offices for classes and training.

The funding "will help us reach more people at different times," she said.

The organization has traditionally offered courses in Spanish to its largely Hispanic clientele; now it hopes to expand its English-language offerings, in part, to serve those from immigrant families who were born in the United States.

"We have started to do a little bit in English. This will allow us to fully expand everything. So we will be fully bilingual in all of our services," said Silva Castro Bennett, president and CEO of Suazo.

The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.