Are you a small to medium-sized manufacturer in Michigan seeking to replace under-performing suppliers or shorten supply lines by finding local suppliers?

Or–are you an inventor in need of a manufacturer to make your design into a product?

The Michigan Manufacturing Technology Center (MMTC) might be able to help! In collaboration with the Michigan Economic Development Corporation (MEDC), the MMTC is matching Michigan manufacturers to new opportunities.

To learn more, contact Dan Luria at (734) 451-4227 or dluria@mmtc.org.

You can also download this MMTC-MEDC Matchmaking Info Sheet.

Are you a new entrepreneur with an idea for a new business?

Are you ready to test the feasibility of your business idea?

Then First Step may be for you.

First Step is an intensive multi-day workshop that helps you learn the business basics to test your business idea. At the end of this workshop, you will have a feasibility plan that will tell you if your business idea is a “go” or “no go.”

TechTown is offering a First Step workshop series on Saturdays starting January 21, 2012. The ten sessions will run from January 21 through March 24 (Jan 21, 28, Feb 4, 11, 18, 25, Mar 3, 10, 17, 24).  Each session is from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m.

First Step is based on the award-winning FastTrac entrepreneurial training series from the Kauffman Foundation. The workshop is valued at up to $750, but through support from the New Economy Initiative, is available to you for $80.

If you are interested in enrolling in First Step, you must submit an application and payment by Monday, January 9. We accept cash, check, credit card and money order made payable to TechTown. Space is limited, and applications will be reviewed on a first-come, first-serve basis.

Note: Although First Step meets for 3 hours per week, you must be able to commit to an additional 6 to 9 hours of your own time to complete take-home assignments.

To obtain an application or to receive answers to any questions, please contact Sha’Kara Mack, TechTown’s Workshop Coordinator, at shakara@techtownwsu.org or (313) 879-4486.

10-Week Learning Agenda

• What is entrepreneurship, and is it for me?
• Communicating the Business Concept
• Gathering Information for Feasibility
• Defining my Product and Service
• Market Analysis
• Price and Profitability
• Cash Flow
• Reality Check and Planning for Further Action

Randal Charlton, Executive in Residence, BOOM! The New Economy

By Randal Charlton, Executive in Residence, BOOM! The New Economy

If you ask Kim Hodge how her TimeBanks work in Detroit, she may well reach into her bag and pull out a ball of colored yarn. She did that recently at a meeting  I attended on the west side of Detroit, and I took part in a banking lesson that appeared more like a Halloween spider web.

There I was in a circle of eight people throwing a ball of wool from person to person. The person with the ball was instructed to ask the assembled company if anyone could help with getting a task done, something, anything, that the individual couldn’t complete unaided. It could be help with building an internet website, transportation, foreign language lessons or work around the house– anything. A hand would go up and the ball would be thrown to the person prepared to carry out the task.

Then, that person would present a new request to the group, and as a hand went up, the ball would be thrown on. Back and forth the ball went with each person holding on to the yarn as they caught it so that in short order, there was a spider web of wool threads crisscrossed between the group.

“There,” said Banker Hodge with satisfaction. “You see you are all connected. You have the collective knowledge and experience to meet the needs of the entire group.”

Welcome to TimeBanks, a concept that, in these difficult economic times, is beginning to spread around the world. Kim Hodge is leading the movement in Michigan, and her leadership was recognized at the recent annual meeting of the Michigan Chapter of AARP, where she was honored with the first-ever Stephen J. Gools Award for Social Change.

Basically, time banks help local communities help each other. In a time bank, everyone’s time is valued equally. You give an hour of your expertise, and you have earned an hour in the bank, which you can use to meet a need you have. Time banks  help people save money, but they do a lot more. “They connect unmet needs to untapped resources, they help people get to know each other and they make communities better places to live and work.”  Another benefit is that there is money involved and no tax.

Each time bank takes a slightly different approach,  depending on the needs of the community, says Kim Hodge. The banks that work best have an organizer who is often a community volunteer.

There is an obvious attraction for older adults who need work done or transportation that they cannot do themselves. In England, there is at least one time bank organized around health care issues. In the U.S., time banks centered on senior care have received grants of $1.2 million from the Robert Wood Foundation. Locally, the Community Foundation of Southeast Michigan has provided support.

So far, Kim has helped eight time banks get up and running in Michigan. There are another 40-plus time banks around the U.S. in addition to time banks in 26 countries around the world. Communities in England have established 126 time banks and  seem to be leading the way in adopting the concept,

To find more information on TimeBanks in Southeast Michigan, go to www.mitimebanks.org or write to the Michigan Alliance of Timebanks, 27580 California Drive SE, Lathrup Village, MI 48076.

To see how people are using time banks to build communities around the world, visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_banking.

For information on other services and ideas that may be of value to the over-50 crowd, contact :

• Melissa Seifert, Associate State Director of Economic Security, AARP; (517) 267-8934 office; (517) 316-6395 cell; mseifert@aarp.org
• The Community Foundation of Southeast Michigan, cfsem.org
• Betsy Creedon, BOOM! The New Economy, betsy@techtownwsu.org