That's Section 8, btw.
The NASA Mentor-Protégé Program
The NASA Mentor-Protégé Program (MPP) is designed to enhance the
capabilities of small, minority, and women-owned businesses to perform
NASA prime contracts and subcontracts. The NASA MPP is an effort on
the part of NASA's Office of Small and Disadvantaged Business Utilization
(OSDBU). The OBSDBU is responsible for promoting Agency utilization of small,
minority and women-owned businesses in compliance with Federal laws,
regulations, and policies. It also assists such firms in obtaining contracts
and subcontracts with NASA and its prime contractors.
The goal of the OSDBU is to fully integrate small, small disadvantaged,
and small women-owned businesses that deliver the highest quality of
goods and services at the lowest practicable costs into NASA's competitive
base of contractors, particularly in the high-technology areas.
The defined purpose of the NASA Mentor-Protégé Program is:
To increase the participation of SDB's, WOSB's, and MEI's in high
technology and non-traditional industries critical to the Agency's mission.
To foster long-term business relationships between SDB's, WOSB's, and
MEI's and major NASA prime contractors.
To participate, the mentor must have, or be competing for, a prime
contract with NASA, and the Protégé must be, or be so designated
in a competition, a subcontractor of the mentor.
The Mentor-Protégé Program drives the expansion of resource and technology
exchange and new business opportunities among all businesses: large,
midsize, and small. NASA recognizes that in order for it to continue to remain
a world leader in research and development, science, space and technology,
it must have access to the best products and services that industry has to
order. In order for industry to fill that order, it must use innovative approaches
like this program to the fullest.
The Goldin-Stokes NASA Mentor-Protégé Award
This annual award formally recognizes outstanding performance of prime
contractors participating in the NASA Mentor-Protege Program. It provides
an incentive for NASA prime contractors to perform in a highly effective manner
in accordance with the program objectives and their approved Mentor-Protégé
Agreement. The award is named after NASA Administrator Dan Goldin and
Honorable Louis Stokes, both of whom are proponents of small and minority
owned business enterprise.
Further information, visit NASA at
http://hq.nasa.gov/office/codek