The meeting, held on November 16, 2022, celebrated National Entrepreneurship Day in Fall River, Massachusetts. Sarah Athens, co-founder and owner of the newly opened Groundwork business, introduced the event, which was part of Global Entrepreneurship Week. Mayor Paul Coogan presented a proclamation officially declaring November 16, 2022, as Fall River Entrepreneurship Day, recognizing entrepreneurs as vital to economic progress and community spirit. He encouraged citizens to support local small businesses.
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so welcome thank you everyone for coming my name is Sarah Athens and groundwork is my business so I'm the co-founder and the current owner of this business we just opened in Fall River so we had our soft opening one week ago and we're very excited to be here uh this event today is part of global entrepreneurship week so it's actually an event that's happening globally and here on the south
0:27coast we've organized with many partners to do a series of events so Viva Fall River is here they're a partner Frac UMass Dartmouth has represented so there's lots going on around the city I encourage you to to talk to me or Patty or Jackie and hear what else is happening but this morning I'm I have the honor of introducing mayor Coogan who's going to give a proclamation for this day to be entrepreneurship day in
0:54Fall River we're really honored and excited to have the mayor here and I'm just going to turn it over to them take care all right well I met Sarah in my office a while ago we sat and talked about her plans for the bottom of the creative class building and uh you could tell from her energy and her enthusiasm that she was electric and I know she will move this along down the road very
1:21quickly when she gets up and running and I do have ultimate respect for people like that because she's trying something different in Fall River and she's trying to like I said move the ball down the road I really respect her and she's seems like a genuine person which is also something I look for so I applaud your reference sound um so I do have a proclamation for um for this event today and whereas every
1:47day local entrepreneurs combine passion resilience and Ingenuity to solve hard problems create products services and businesses that will improve all our lives and local and entrepreneurs that repeatedly risen to meet our cities our Nations and our world's most complex challenges including in recent years the devastating economic effects of the global pandemic and by recognizing these
2:14entrepreneurs and small businesses during the global entrepreneurship week we acknowledge that they are the engines of our economic progress and the Heart and Soul of our community the purpose of fall over entrepreneurship day is to celebrate their contribution and commitment to our community and encourage a local entrepreneurial ecosystem that will Empower Inspire and support New Growth Innovation and success
2:42whereas Fall River entrepreneurship they will be celebrated on the third Wednesday of November the 16th 2022 and therefore be it resolved that I Paul Coogan mayor of Fall River do hereby Proclaim November 16 2022 as Fall River entrepreneurship day in the city of Fall River and I urge all of our citizens to support small businesses and entrepreneurs across the community thank you foreign
3:23and I have one of the small piece of housekeeping this person is also a ball of fire um she's around the city all the time she's very very engaged she's very very active she had a great event on Saturday night over on Old Second Street I hope some of you got to go by I have to award her with the mayoral citation but that's not worded right I don't have to I want to because she uh
3:50she does a lot of great stuff in the city so let it be known that Patty Rigo in honor and recognition of receiving the 2022 Gateway City Innovation award the entire citizenry of Fall River extends its best wishes and expresses the and hopes that your continued good fortune and successes in all of your endeavors in Fall River Patty Regal thank you everybody for being here okay let's take the picture and then we'll go
4:34on all right
4:45thank you oh no I say to something all the time I just wanted to invite everybody um later today at the Viva Fall River pop-up which is on the corner of South Main in Columbia 333 South Main we will be having a meet the makers event at the pop-up and we're going to invite all of our makers to come and we're going to have a olive oil tasting that's curated
5:06by portugalia which is another one of uh fall River's biggest entrepreneurship stories I would like to think um and we're gonna I just want to invite everybody to come to the store and support we have over 40 different makers local makers from the south coast selling their products and it's a wonderful thing when we can support our neighbors and our friends in their dreams and their Endeavors and also just
5:26get some wonderful one-of-a-kind things so thank you all for coming today for entrepreneurship day is every day really but um it really was my pleasure to to submit for the proclamation because we should take one day to celebrate the people whose courage it is it's being an entrepreneur is a lot of Courage and it's a lot of hard work and there are no when Friday comes like oh the weekend no
5:48the weekend's just two more days to work so um but you know you do it because you love it and because you want to share your talents with people and I applaud everybody who gets up every day and shares their talents with everybody and thank you very much forgive me you might answer some of these ideas real quick yeah Sarah tell me about funding please and employees yeah um funding as every entrepreneur knows
6:19is challenging so for us one of the huge supports is we've been a recipient of mass development's collaborative workspace Grant we just received funding for this space for particularly so I'll be able to complete the furniture and the fit out for the space but beyond that it's a lot of bootstrapping in the very beginning I got some friends and family to invest but it's it hasn't been
6:44easy it also not quitting my day job early on was part of the funding strategy yeah the building has an amazing history and it was vacant for 20 years can you tell us about that how you transformed it yeah so this building was built in the late 1800s it was originally the Durfee textile School interestingly enough it's a sister school to to our space in New Bedford which was also built in the late 1800s
7:09then it became Durfee Tech and I believe that SMU Southeastern Mass University and BCC were also in here at one point but it was vacant for the past 20 years so it was a huge undertaking to restore and develop the building to be able to be used again who should be here you know what what's an entrepreneur who should India call you up and say I I need assistance what
7:34can you help me with you know in our in the case of co-working the definition for entrepreneurs is very broad I would say anyone that's working independently now after the pandemic we have a lot of people that are just working remotely at home and they want to feel like they're part of a community so those folks are welcome we have the more traditional entrepreneurs that are starting a
7:55business we have a lot of folks who are more late career Consultants they really kind of matured through their career and they're wonderful because they Mentor some of our younger people coming up we also have a lot of small non-profits that work here so it's the co-working model makes a lot of sense for them they have access to large meeting rooms to hold board meetings and things like that
8:16so it's it's really a diverse mix which I think is what makes the community so great