WESST Corp, the Women's Economic Self-Sufficiency Team, is a non-profit economic development organization headquartered in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Its mission is to facilitate the start-up and growth of women and minority-owned small businesses throughout the state of New Mexico. WESST Corp has regional offices in Las Cruces, Roswell, Santa Fe, and Gallup.
Visit Wesst.org to learn more.
All of the artists featured on www.WesstArtisans.com are graduates of WESST Corp's MARKETLINK microenterprise development program. The comprehensive sales and marketing training program is designed to provide meaningful business skills to carefully screened artisans and entrepreneurs who possess limited ability to expand their sales arenas.
The MARKETLINK project is particularly important in New Mexico because many smart, talented individuals live in rural, isolated areas with little or no access to large, productive marketplaces for their products.
The MARKETLINK program has been presented in Taos, Taos Pueblo, Santa Fe, Las Cruces and on the Navajo Nation to artisans and other small business owners for more than five years, and in Albuquerque since 2003.
Funding for WesstArtisans.com was granted to WESST Corp through participation in the Kellogg Foundation's MIRA program. General funding for the MARKETLINK training program is provided by the Ms. Foundation, the Mott Foundation, the McCune Charitable Foundation, Bank of America, and Centinel Bank of Taos, based on a successful pilot project in Taos County, New Mexico.
