At the Minnesota Hmong Chamber of Commerce, we strive to help businesses grow and sustain through engagement, collaboration, and advocacy in Minnesota!
For the past 2 years, our Minnesota AAPI business community has taken a big hit from the covid pandemic, Asian hate, and civil unrest.
As we all know, our businesses and organizations serve our community. As the Chair of the Hmong Chamber, my goal and vision are to build supportive relationships, rekindle existing ones and connect with all the different nonprofit organizations, businesses, state and federal agencies and state elected officials. So we can come in solidarity to work together, share knowledge, resources, and services so we can better serve our community, and build a prosperous community for now and for generations to come.
As an AAPI community, we have all been affected in various ways during these difficult times. Hmong Chamber’s many smaller Asian ethnic groups in Minnesota have reached out to us for help during these tough times. They didn’t have a chamber of commerce and accessing resources and finding the right connection was very hard. So it made sense for us to do an event like this to bring the AAPI community together to help support each other. The Hmong Chamber of commerce is here to serve all. We are about diversity, equality, and inclusion. Many of our members and supporters are not Hmong. We appreciate everyone’s support and we are here to help all people.
We also wanted to do an event that will bring everyone together to help uplift our businesses and community and also focus on economic development, growth, and sustainability through these challenging times. We can all benefit from this event. Whether you are a student, entrepreneur, business owner, or someone looking for a job, there is something to learn and to gain from this event.
As a small business owner myself, I know how important it is to build relationships. And I’m sure that many entrepreneurs would feel the same. We all know knowledge is power. An event like this will allow us to achieve these goals.
And from there on we formed a planning committee consisting of over 30 members from nonprofit organizations, businesses, and state and federal agencies where we met bi-weekly. And everyone contributed in some way or another.
And from there on we formed a planning committee consisting of over 30 members from nonprofit organizations, businesses, and state and federal agencies where we met bi-weekly. And everyone contributed in some way or another.
Our goal was just to have 50 exhibitors and we ended up with 70+. We had to limit the number of exhibitors due to space capacity. Overall we have 80+ partners and sponsors combined.
My point here is that when we come together we are stronger together. The Expo like this is a perfect example. When you see our flyers, website, banners, backdrop, and tote bags, you see a collage of all the logos of our sponsors and partners. And there’s a reason behind that. It’s to show unity.