She goes by the moniker “Heymiss Progress” and now award-winning entrepreneur Sabrina Madison is putting her name to the test.
During a gathering of the Urban League in Madison, Wisconsin, the entrepreneur and motivational speaker announced the establishment of a new Progress Center for Black Women backed by a 150 thousand-dollar fundraising initiative. The goal of the center will be to construct new professional development opportunities and cooperative spaces for women of color.
Madison, who is also the creator of the annual Black Women’s Leadership Conference, Black Excellence Youth Conference and Black Business expos, believes that bringing each of her organizations under one umbrella will help to expand her efforts to empower Black women and their families.
“This is about providing a more concrete and long-lasting way to serve black women,” Madison told the Cap Times. In addition to the programs she’s already created, Madison would like to leverage the new center and create two new platforms — the ambition accelerator for Black women in leadership, and the blkCOLLAB, a collaborative space for Black entrepreneurs.
“The most exciting part is it brings together the opportunity for us to create a small dollar lending program for women of color,” she told the audience during her announcement to the Urban League. As reported by the CAP Times, the small-dollar lending program will partner with a credit union. Madison’s aim is to raise $50,000 for the project that is geared at removing the stigma around needing to borrow money while improving borrowers’ credit.
Madison is hoping to get the new center and it’s two new initiatives up and running by Black History Month, 2018. If you would like to donate to or learn more about the Center for Black Women, visit centerforblackwomen.org.