Small Business Lender of 2015 to Sponsor 2016 Maui Small Business Week

HawaiiUSA Federal Credit Union will sponsor this year’s week-long Maui Small Business Week.

HawaiiUSA Federal Credit Union will sponsor this year’s week-long Maui Small Business Week scheduled for May 9 through 13, 2016.

HawaiiUSA Federal Credit Union was named “2015 Small Business Lender of the Year, Category III” by the Small Business Administration.

This year’s event will be the third Maui Small Business Week organized by Maui Business Brainstormers.

“HawaiiUSA nailed it by understanding the importance of this yearly Maui County SBW, a five-day program focused on providing relevant education and information that can really help local small, fledgling, and startup businesses grow stronger,” said Maui SBW and MBB Organizer Lori Fisher.

Organizers said it takes significant financial support to put together a week-long live event with well-known speakers and topics that matter to the community of small, fledgling and startup businesses.

“Therefore, a full five-day Small Business Week had only been accomplished by a handful of metropolitan USA cities at the time that Maui joined the list in 2014,” Fisher added.

“Understanding that its local business community deserves much more support to achieve stronger and long-lasting business success, Maui County believes that embracing the full National Small Business Week is one of many opportunities to celebrate its local business community and to show that the county cares about helping its local businesses on the road to success,” said MBB Organizer Grace Fung.

“Therefore, Maui has chosen to provide a week of free business education via live seminars and workshops that usually would be costly to any very small/fledgling/startup business,” Fung added.

The Maui SBW program is focused on delivering education and value; therefore, it works with topnotch expert speakers to offer only presentations that include no sales pitches.

“This is a credit to the speakers who are committed to a program that helps attendees by focusing on relevant content, and also a credit to the sponsors who step up to enable an advertising-free event,” said Fung.

Because admission is free, Maui SBW relies 100% on sponsorships and its organizers appreciate strong businesses like HawaiiUSA, that step up to help make Small Business Week happen on Maui, the organizers said.

“I am so happy that we are able to help small business owners to grow and be successful, because small businesses make a big difference in our community,” said Sylvia Ho, business relationship officer and financial advisor at HawaiiUSA’s Kahului Branch.

Ho won the 2015 Gold Award for SBA Lending Officer of the Year on Maui. She has also won a Holumua Award for “Export Lending Officer.”

“With our dedicated spirit toward helping Maui’s small businesses thrive, HawaiiUSA is proud to be a sponsor of this year’s Maui Small Business Week, to demonstrate our support of the organization in Hawai‘i,” said Ho.