ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT COLLABORATIVE- VENTURA COUNTY

The Economic Development Collaborative-Ventura County (EDC-VC) is a public/privatepartnership that provides businesses with professional consulting, training and lending services to help business thrive and add jobs. For 2024:"Continuing to serve as fiscal agent and co-convener of Uplift Central Coast. Shaping an equitable recovery from COVID-19, this partnership draws us into dialogue with all manner of stakeholders across the Central Coast. That dialogue provides guidance to our current distribution of $9 million in state "Catalyst" grants to promote an equitable regional economic recovery. "Our Ventura County Digital Upskilling Training Program continues on two main fronts: a partnership with the Ventura County Adult Schools Consortium, for computer basics training, and a "Get Your Small Business Online" curriculum for entrepreneurs and small business owners, in collaboration with Women's Economic Ventures. This Digital Upskilling initiative is a pilot project with online replication toolkits available to other workforce and economic development training organizations."Our collaboration and participation in FATHOMWERX continues, in partnership with commands at Navy Base Ventura County, the Port of Hueneme and MatterLabs, serving as a public/private laboratory, community , and resource for technological innovation, striving to fuse small and non-traditional companies, academic institutions and other Department of Defense stakeholders together to work on the most challenging problems in miliary, port and maritime domains."Continuing partnership in support of Early Child Education, promoting a broad and stable early care ecosystem, including technical assistance and lending contributing to vibrant and competitive home-based and child care center businesses, and, especially, the highest quality care for children and support networks for working parents. Key initiatives and partnerships include the Isabella project-involving a broad coalition of partners committed to a pilot project to make highest-quality early childhood education available to 100% of 0- to 5-year-olds in the community of Santa Paula-and `the "Shared Services Alliance," a partnership with First 5 Ventura County, the County Office of Education and Child Development Resources of Ventura County."Serving as fiscal agent and managing partner of the Broadband Consortium of the Pacific Coast, in partnership with the Ventura Council of Governments developed the Ventura County Regional Broadband Initiative and Last Mile Connections Framework and continue to partner with the County of Santa Barbara for its regional plan implementation. "Finally, we continue our collaboration with the California Governor's Office of Business and Economic Development (GO-Biz):oThe GO-Biz Office of the Small Business Advocate designated EDC as an Accelerate CA: Inclusive Innovation Hub providing $1 million over four years to support technology-based firms and expanding opportunities for women and minority-owned businesses.oEDC was awarded some $900,000 to augment our federal U.S. Small Business Administration funding, helping to assure we maintain our high level of services as we recover from the pandemic.oOur lending programs and borrowers benefitted from nearly $3 million in loan guarantees from the GO-Biz Infrastructure and Economic Development Bank.oIn our role as the Ventura County Film Commission, we serve as an extension of the California Film Commission, also an office within GO-Biz.