by Paige Barnes, WSBT 22

Wednesday, July 20th 2022

See Full Story

Attracting young adults and talented workers to bring innovation to the community.

That's the goal of enFocus, a local non-profit celebrating its 10-year anniversary tonight.

The fellowship program is looking to extend into Southwest Michigan.

enFocus fellows work on public service projects in St. Joseph, Elkhart and Marshall Counties.

Now, they will get to expand in a different state.

It's a win for the area and recent graduates.

enFocus brings in young professionals and matches them with local organizations.

The objective is to keep them here.

Andrew Wiand, the executive director of enFocus, says it's all about the return on investment.

"You get to promote your idea, implement it, and likely that leads to a job that you're proud of making that change," Wiand said. "So retention is based upon having that great opportunity after the fellowship that largely you've influenced during your work here."

Fellows have worked with organizations like the City of South Bend, Marshall County Community Foundation and Elkhart County's COVID-19 response team.

Some have been a part of creating a private LTE network for South Bend schools.

"Look at all the individuals around the room that are excited to be here from seven fellows to over 40 collective fellows in the next year. Also, the projects the community leaders here represent more and more and more organizations," he said.

Their footprint is expanding across state lines.

Shivangi Tiwari started her fellowship in 2020.

She'll be helping lead the enFocus in their Niles office when it opens.

"What I started off doing in my project was to understand our feasibility of being there and understanding what kind of good first projects we should be working on for the community as well as for enFocus," Tiwari said.

The non-profit's model might expand nationally.

Levon Johnson, a board member of enFocus and president and CEO of the Elkhart Chamber of Commerce says they're talking about how their program could work in other communities.

"We know we have a secret sauce here in South Bend Elkhart region, that's not duplicated everywhere. It has to do with the entrepreneurship that's in this area...," Johnson said.

Fellow teams have helped 7 local startups, 12 social impact initiatives, and secured more than 1.3 million dollars in grant funding this year.