Elsa Bustamante describes herself as being Hispanic and from Ecuador. She describes herself as an entrepreneur and a community advocate for the Hispanic community. She discusses the entrepreneurial spirit in the Hispanic community and how her mother owned a restaurant. Her business, Precision Capital exists to help small business owners. She talks about how immigrants come to the US for opportunities and also face challenges as they pursue those opportunities in the US. She talks about education being the key to personal growth and credits her education for allowing her to move from lower-wage work to professional labor.
She talks about the train accident in Graniteville in 2000 that devastated the community and forced her then employer, Avondale Mills, to close. She started her business after the accident. At Avondale Mills, she recruited Hispanic/Latino workers.
She came to the Augusta area around 1990 with her ex-husband, who moved here to work. She found the Hispanic community to be very small then. She talks about how Augusta has grown since she arrived.
She says that more Hispanics are moving to places that have not had a history of a sizable Hispanic/Latino population like Augusta and moving from a variety of Spanish-speaking countries. She finds that the local community at large has been supportive of the Hispanic/Latino community. She sees politicians paying more attention to the Hispanic/Latino community as it grows. She discusses the positive and negative aspects of the local Hispanic/Latino population being dispersed through the area. She talks about a study from 2000 that was done in the area that found that transportation and language were barriers to their success then. She thinks that the challenges that face the Hispanic/Latino community are different today. She talks about how businesses are adapting to cater to the Hispanic/Latino community and the growth of Hispanic-owned businesses in the area since she has arrived. She surveyed local Hispanic community members in 2012 regarding their education and found that a number of the first-generation respondents had low levels of education. As a result, the nonprofit she worked at then began to provide GED classes in Spanish and a high school education program from the Mexican government.
The one thing that she says that she would change in the CSRA would be to see more diverse political representation in Augusta to improve the quality of life in the area.
She talked about learning English from her largely non-Hispanic friends as there were no ESOL classes. She talks about ESOL classes that began to crop up in the area. She finds that the language barrier has decreased in the area over time.
She worked at Goodwill for nine years. There, she created an award-winning outreach program to that exponentially increased Hispanic/Latino community members’ engagement with Goodwill’s services.
She started getting involved in community service at Augusta College as a hospice intern. She talks about she did not see formal nonprofit organizations in Ecuador. Bustamante’s mother’s generosity and willingness to help to others has also inspired Bustamante’s community work. As a business owner, she discusses facing the challenge of combining her desire to help others and running a business. She sees helping businesses grow as a way to make an impact on the local community. She talks about how when she attended Augusta College, she was the only Hispanic at the school and how the university today works to reach out to the Hispanic/Latino community.
Bustamante's diploma from Augusta College. Coming the US, she worked a series of basic jobs. She describes education as the key that unlocked a future beyond working as a laborer. Her education allowed her to live a different life, be financially independent, provide for her children, and grow as a person. She sees education as a legacy that she has been able to give her children.
Prior to opening her own business, Ms. Bustamante worked for a nonprofit organization. This brochure brings together her past of being in a nonprofit and her desire to continue serving the Hispanic community with her present situation of owning her own business.
