Financial powerhouse Morgan Stanley has launched a Multicultural Innovation Lab to help startups secure funding for their young companies and new ideas.

Five companies have been chosen to be part of the program and the bank will sponsor two of the companies a year, according to Business Insider.

The participants Kairos, Landit, AptDeco, GitLinks and Trigger will work out of the Morgan Stanley headquarters for a four-month period granting them access to Newark Venture Partners, a New Jersey-based venture capital firm, and TechStars, a global entrepreneurial network.

Brian Brackeen the founder of Kairos, a startup that combines artificial intelligence with facial recognition, expressed the difficulty of finding funding.  

“I come from a middle-class African American family in Philly,” said Brackeen. “I’m not that guy from an affluent family who went to an Ivy League school and has a huge college network of friends in banking and hedge funds.”

The innovation lab was the brainchild of Carla Harris, a Vice Chairwoman of Morgan Stanley and Head of its Multicultural Client Strategy Group. She put together an investment committee after getting the go-ahead from Morgan Stanley Vice Chairman Tom Nides and began to work on creating a network of mentors for the entrepreneurs. Harris is well-aware of the funding issues minority entrepreneurs face. 

“Only a small fraction of all venture capital money is given to multicultural and women entrepreneurs,” explained Harris. “Meanwhile, Morgan Stanley is a leader at the intersection of what these companies need: capital, connections, and investment banking content. We have the resources, access to relationships, and the expertise that can help  refine these businesses and hopefully attract capital to scale up in size.”

This program is a much-needed step in the right direction.