EDISON — Mayor Thomas Lankey said he is proud Facebook has selected Edison to be among the 30 national markets for its Community Boost Program.
“This is terrific news for Edison and, more broadly, for central New Jersey,” he said. “We are eager to partner with Facebook on this valuable endeavor.”
Lankey said his administration has, and will continue, to offer support and guidance to “gutsy entrepreneurs trying to start new businesses.”
“We want their investment in our town to succeed,” he said. “When that happens, everyone wins.”
In November, Facebook introduced Facebook Community Boost, a new program to help American small businesses grow and to equip more people with the digital skills they need to compete in the new economy, according to a statement provided by Dan Levy, vice president of small business for Facebook.
Facebook Community Boost will visit 30 cities, including Houston, St. Louis, Albuquerque, Des Moines, Iowa, and Greenville, S.C. Representatives of Facebook, a social media platform, will work with local organizations to provide digital skills and training for people in need of work, to advise entrepreneurs how to get started, and to help existing local businesses and nonprofits get the most out of the internet, according to Levy.
The Facebook Community Boost event in Edison will take place Oct. 8-9.
“Small businesses are the backbone of the township’s economy. They are our most significant source of full- and part-time jobs and generate considerable revenue for our community,” said Lankey, a former member of the Middlesex County Workforce Development Board. “These ‘mom-and-pop’ businesses are economic mainstays here and in most New Jersey towns.”
Since 2011, Facebook has invested more than $1 billion in training, technology, tools, support and research to help people and small businesses alike, Levy said.
This includes existing programs like Boost Your Business, which has trained more than 60,000 small businesses in the United States and hundreds of thousands more around the world. More than one million small businesses have taken advantage of Facebook’s free online learning hub, Blueprint, and more than 70 million small businesses use Facebook pages each month. And, the company recently created a digital marketing curriculum that will help train 3,000 people in Michigan in digital skills development over the next two years.
“Edison is such a great, diverse location, it is the crossroads and so many people do business in the township,” said Joseph Coyle, a business owner, township councilman and president of the Edison Chamber of Commerce. “We have a large warehouse business industry. This will be a huge opportunity for small businesses to receive training and learn about what Facebook has to offer.”
Levy said Facebook Community Boost was developed based on requests from small business owners for Facebook to spend more time in their cities and to provide more training.
For more information, visit facebook.com/communityboost.
Contact Kathy Chang at kchang@newspapermediagroup.com.
