News
Winrock Helps Arkansas Small Businesses in Phillips County Seek Disaster Relief Aid
June 22, 2020
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — June 22, 2020 — Winrock International is providing small businesses in Phillips County, Arkansas, with one-on-one guidance on how to navigate funding available through recent federally-approved programs. With only a fraction of the more than 200,000 small businesses in Arkansas applying for funding offered through the Small Business Administration (SBA) and other federal agencies, […]
Pushing Through the Storm
April 21, 2020
Gre’Juana “G” Dennis, an adviser for Innovate Arkansas (IA), first began to notice the economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic in early February. Business remained on track in the United States, which had recorded its first documented COVID-19 case a couple weeks before, but the virus had already disrupted manufacturing plans for one IA client […]
Innovate Arkansas Hosts U.S. Rep. French Hill
April 2, 2020
Innovate Arkansas recently launched a new webcast to assist startups and founders with actionable information to help them navigate the coronavirus-induced economic crisis. In this webcast, Innovate Arkansas Director David Sanders speaks with U.S. Representative French Hill about how the recently passed Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act can help sustain small and […]
Coming Through Loud and Clear
March 13, 2020
In a hospital bed at Great River Medical Center in Blytheville, a farming community in rural northeast Arkansas, a patient tells Dr. Darren Sommer that her stomach hurts. A nurse named Emily applies a stethoscope. “That sounds good,” Sommer says. “I’m going to let Emily push on your belly. Please let me know if you […]
Winrock and Kasetsart
February 19, 2020
A Winrock Legacy Story Winrock International’s connection with Thailand’s Kasetsart University began before Winrock itself. Only 12 years after Kasetsart was established in 1943, one of Winrock’s founding organizations, the New York City-based Agricultural Development Council (then known as the Council on Economic and Cultural Affairs), began helping Kasetsart University form an agricultural economics program. It was […]
Refining the Process
February 10, 2020
It was 2015 and the oil market had just crashed as Michael Smith sat down to lunch in Little Rock with his friend Barry Lile. In more than two decades as a salesman in the used oil business, Smith had developed a national network of suppliers such as car repair shops, quick lubes, grocery stores […]
DRA and Winrock Extend Delta I-Fund to Help Delta Entrepreneurs Launch Startups
February 5, 2020
The Delta Regional Authority (DRA) has awarded Winrock International a $675,785 grant to continue the successful Delta Innovation Fund (I-Fund) program through October 2021. Modeled on the National Science Foundation’s I-Corps program, the I-Fund is a proof-of-concept business training program designed to assist potential start-up companies emerging from universities and communities across the DRA’s eight-state, […]
How Arkansas Became the Nation’s Edamame Capital
January 23, 2020
A Winrock Legacy Story Herby Ault, who farms near Dardanelle, Arkansas, had never heard of edamame when Kelly Cartwright first approached him about growing it. But Cartwright, an agricultural scientist and entrepreneur, had done the math and knew it would work. “We had the numbers and we also had the market,” says Cartwright, who leads the Natural […]
‘You can accomplish a dream — you can jump out there and do it.’
December 13, 2019
“I grew up in a family with 56 women and four men. So essentially, we had a whole lotta moms and not a lot of dads” Winrock’s Chauncey Holloman Pettis told the crowd at The Yarn, an organization that uses the power of storytelling to build understanding and human connection in Little Rock, Arkansas. “This left the […]
Matching Innovation to Need
December 12, 2019
Luis took a break from the virtual welding station and approached a man holding a pen and a reporter’s notebook. Luis, 50, drives a forklift on an early-morning shift, he explained, and welding could be a path to a brighter and more lucrative future. “It’s a good option for when I need a new job,” […]