Mercadito La Unidad – Economic Empowerment Initiative

Income inequality

San Gabriel Valley

Expand existing project, program, or initiative (expanding and continuing ongoing, successful work)

Gente focuses its work on empowering working-class and immigrant families in the City of Pomona — one of the largest cities in LA County's SPA 3 in terms of population (151,733 or 9.5% of SPA 3's population) and size (22.9 square miles). Over 32% of Popona's population is foreign born and over 72% are people of color.
Income inequality continues to be a major issue here. While the Gini index for Pomona ranges from 0.40 to 0.42, there are extreme differences between SPA 3 cities. At $78,869, Pomona's median household income is significantly lower than nearby cities like Diamond Bar ($106,602) and Claremont ($122,127). An estimated 39.1% of Pomona residents live 200% below FPL.
Many of the mothers and grandmothers we work with run street vending businesses to make ends meet. But their livelihood, safety and well-being is now threatened by new street vending ordinances in Pomona (as documented here: https://bit.ly/SEEDS-StreetVendor) as well as the ICE raids throughout the region.

Gente has deep ties with many of Pomona’s working-class families, including the mothers and grandmothers who operate informal street vending businesses. In 2024, Gente partnered with these community members to launch Mercadito La Unidad, a monthly event hosted at the Gente Youth Center that offers a safe and supportive space for women to earn income by selling homemade goods and food.
The Mercadito La Unidad – Economic Empowerment Initiative represents the next phase of this project and will expand this work into a new 12-month effort to support women vendors not only as entrepreneurs but also as leaders, mentors, and cultural organizers. The project will offer tools, training, and shared infrastructure to help vendors strengthen their microbusinesses and economic agency. 
Central to this project is a peer mentorship pilot that pairs veteran street vendors with newer participants wishing to support onboarding and confidence-building.
Other key activities include: 
Vendor focus groups with Mercadito vendors to gather input on their needs, priorities, and barriers to economic growth.
Mercadito events that offer new and veteran street vendors a safe space to sell goods and food
Creation of a shared equipment library, with tents, tables, carts, and signage that can be shared across Mercadito events.
Youth-led activations to support intergenerational learning and collect stories and data
Economic impact tracking to assess vendor outcomes and support future growth.

Mercadito La Unidad is an evolving community-led infrastructure that provides mentorship, tools, and shared resources for vendors who are excluded from traditional economic systems. If successful, this project will offer a replicable model for reducing income inequality by empowering low-income immigrant women to establish and grow their own street vending microbusinesses. As more women build their businesses, they gain agency over their income, time and futures—and they reinvest that power back into their community by mentoring and guiding the next wave of female microbusiness owners.
We also envision the Mercadito as a means of reclaiming and activating public space. Although the Mercadito currently takes place at the Gente Youth Center, we are already laying the groundwork for a community-owned and operated open-air space where street vendors can operate safely. This project has the potential to be adapted by other cities across Los Angeles County and throughout California.