Delaware’s new Hispanic Chamber of Commerce launches to help Latino firms grow

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While Latino-owned businesses have seen steady growth — increasing from 5% of Delaware businesses in 2022 to 6% in 2023 — those numbers could grow even more quickly if many businesses didn’t face challenges like access to capital, lack of resources, language barriers and uneven government support.

Nationally, the Latino community contributes $3.2 trillion to the U.S. GDP.

Latino businesses in Delaware need more support from the state, according to Ronaldo Tello, owner of Delaware Hispanic Magazine and organizer of the Delaware Hispanic Award ceremony. While planning last year’s ceremony, he discovered a shared desire among Latino businesses to strengthen community ties, which led to the founding of the Delaware Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.

“The state is already receiving a lot of funding through so many Latino businesses and we have to make sure that that comes back and helps them,” he said. “People said, ‘Why don’t we form something where we can help each other, where we can really connect with resources,’ and I think this cry came from the great number of first-generation business owners that we had, and many of them felt isolated and kind of disconnected from other efforts to support the business community.”

He identified common obstacles encountered by business owners.

“In that meeting, they spoke about the barriers that many times immigrants go through. The first generation has this language barrier, then there is a lack of trust because some of the resources are from the government,” he added. “We also learned that the community needed a lot of financial literacy support.”