Small businesses are making a comeback after two challenging years under COVID-19. There were more than 47,000 new business registrations in Connecticut in 2021; a 20 percent increase from 2020, according to the Secretary of State’s Office.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
CT Latino News spoke with Sonia Alvelo, CEO of Latin Financial, a family-owned and operated brokerage firm in Newington with offices in Puerto Rico. “Everybody was lost, everybody was overwhelmed,” said Alvelo on the Latino News Network\u2019s<\/a> podcast, \u201c3 Questions With\u2026\u201d<\/a> about the early days of the pandemic when small businesses were scrambling to get financial help in order to stay afloat. “There was so much miscommunication,” she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Alvelo\u00a0described the beginning of the pandemic as a tense and stressful situation as her firm scrambled to help their clients access Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) funding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Many members of the Hispanic-Latino community weren\u2019t aware of COVID financial aid, including the U.S. Small Business Administration\u2019s (SBA) Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) program\u00a0until Alvelo told them. She worked with dozens of business owners submitting first-time applications, loan increase requests, and reconsiderations of denied requests \u2013 many times translating information in Spanish.<\/p>\n\n\n\n