1Berkshire Awards Grant to Roots & Dreams and Mustard Seeds

PITTSFIELD — 1Berkshire, thanks to a one-time earmark from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, announced the awarding of a $15,000 Immigrant Entrepreneurial Support Grant to Roots & Dreams and Mustard Seeds. This grant represents the second of two high-impact partner grant awards made by 1Berkshire to help foster the ecosystem and infrastructure needed to help the robust Berkshire immigrant entrepreneur community grow and thrive.

Leveraging a one-time earmark allocated by the Commonwealth, 1Berkshire’s Immigrant Business Support Program launched in early 2025 to provide a variety of financial and technical assistance support to help entrepreneurs and businesses in the region gain improved access to programs that help their businesses improve.

This high-impact partner grant awarded to Roots & Dreams and Mustard Seeds advances this work by helping the organization to overcome a final funding hurdle to fit out a shared commercial kitchen space in its building at 117-133 Fenn St. in Pittsfield. Additionally, this $15,000 aims to help offset some of the $37,000 in Community Empowerment and Reinvestment Fund (CERP) funds cut from a previously awarded CERP grant (a funding resource that has been integral to its work over the past two years).

The multi-use spaces of 117-133 Fenn St. have already become a major anchor point of community, support, and entrepreneurship for a diverse array of individuals and small businesses. Fitting out this new shared kitchen space will further improve the ability of the space to become an incubator and accelerator of various food businesses, allowing historically distressed populations to bring their dreams to fruition. With 73 enrolled participants in the organization’s cooperative development program, including seven developing cooperatives, it has fostered a growing culture of employee ownership and equity building in the region.

“As a more radical, grassroots organization, it can be difficult for us to find funding from partners or collaborators who respect our autonomy and vision,” said Michael Hitchcock of Roots & Dreams and Mustard Seeds. “We’re very grateful to the 1Berkshire team, who spent so much time understanding our approach and our plans before suggesting a mutually beneficial way to collaborate on reopening this kitchen, a project that will benefit both the individuals who work there and the economic development of Pittsfield in general.”

Benjamin Lamb, 1Berkshire’s vice president of Economic Development, added that “we are so thankful that we could work with the incredible team at Roots & Dreams and Mustard Seeds to put these resources toward good work that will have a long-term impact on our diverse entrepreneurial community. Having these one-time funds available and matching them with a partner doing deep and meaningful work is exactly the type of connective tissue building we love to support.”