Bronx Workshop: How to Grow a Profitable Business

Speaking of advice for small business owners (see the post below), the non-profit group Workshop in Business Opportunities is running a 16-week course on how to run a profitable business, at nine locations throughout the city, including one in the South Bronx. We’re told there’s no set deadline, though applicants are accepted on a first come, first serve basis. The courses start in February. Visit www.wibo.org or see the flyer below for more info.WIBO Spring11 Workshop

New Bronx Office to Help Small Business Owners

Officials cut the ribbon on SCORE’s first Bronx office (photo courtesy of the Borough President’s office)Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz, Jr., and Bronx Overall Economic Development Corporation President Marlene Cintron cut the ribbon today on a new Bronx office for SCORE, a nonprofit that offers free counseling for small businesses and entrepreneurs. The new SCORE office will be in the building that houses the BOEDC, at 851 Grand Concourse, where business owners can seek advice from professional mentors every Thursday from 10 to 4 p.m. You can make an appointment by calling (718) 590-6252. “Our Bronx businesses need and deserve every resource they can get,” Diaz said. “I am thrilled that SCORE has made a decision to provide direct access to its services to Bronx businesses.”Learn more about SCORE on their website:

One More Bronxite of the Year

Though the deadline technically passed, we wanted to mention another nominee we received for Bronxite of the Year-when we asked our readers to tell us about members of their communities who made a difference in 2010. If you missed the original post, you can see everyone who was nominated here. Reader Shoshana Brown e-mailed us a glowing nomination for longtime teacher and Bronx resident Gail Brown. “She came to the Bronx in the 1980s and lived in Hunts Point,” Shoshana wrote. “She weathered storms of poor landlords and high crime rates to fall in love with a borough that loved her back.”

BP Diaz 'Digusted' by American Idol

Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz, Jr., is firing off against last night’s episode of “American Idol,” where one contender, a 16-year-old boy named Travis Orlando, took camera crews on a tour of the Bronx neighborhood where he grew up.”You have robberies, you have killings, anything you can possibly imagine, it goes on here,” Orlando said of the shelter where he lived with his family, which appears to be on the Grand Concourse. The video, complete with a dramatic musical montage, shows shots of liter on the street and ambulances whirring by, sirens blazing. You can watch the whole thing above, including Orlando’s audition (he sings the Beatles song “Eleanor Rigby.”)In a statement sent out this morning, Diaz said he’s “disgusted” with the show’s treatment of the borough.”Rather than focus on the amazing revitalization the Bronx has seen over the past three decades, the producers of the show chose instead to highlight the negative stereotypes that have plagued our borough for years,” he said. “The portrayal of the Bronx by the producers of American Idol in such an extremely negative light is not only shameful, it does not accurately represent how far the Bronx has come.”What do you all think? Leave your thoughts in the comments section.

Bronx News Roundup, Jan. 20

Big Brothers and Big Sisters, the organization that matches adult mentors with children and teens, is looking for volunteers in the Bronx. The group received only 27 Bronx mentors last year.A Bronx woman has been reunited with her daughter, who was kidnapped over two decades ago.Councilman Oliver Koppell and Borough President Ruben Diaz, Jr., continue their fight for passage of a Living Wage bill, which stemmed from last year’s battle over plans for the Kingbridge Armory. The two pols attended a rally in Harlem last week in support of the legislation, which Mayor Bloomberg and the business community have opposed.

Bronx Crime Watch: Police Look for Missing 10-Year-Old

Nathaniel Martinez went missing yesterday. (Photo: NYPD)Police sent out an alert early this morning asking for assistance in tracking down a missing 10-year-old Bronx boy. Nathaniel Martinez (pictured) went missing from his home at 2333 Loring Place North – just south of Fordham Road and east of Sedgwick Avenue – yesterday and that he was wearing “a black and red coat, green and white shirt, black jeans and black boots,” according to the alert. Nathaniel is described as being 5-feet tall and weighing about 70 pounds. He has dark hair and brown eyes.If anyone has any information about Nathaniel or thinks they might have seen him, call Crime Stoppers at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477).