Job Creation Through Microenterprise

Women's Initiative has released a new research paper on “Job Creation through Microenterprise Development.”

The research shows that our training support program is a proven method of job creation. In 2009, when major corporations were downsizing and announcing layoffs, Women’s Initiative graduates created 2,244 jobs. Other highlights of the research include:

·Nine in ten clients are employed or self-employed twelve months after training.

·More than six in ten are self-employed twelve months after training.

·One year after training more than one in ten clients provided part-time, full-time, temporary and contract jobs for others.

·Five years after training, more than one in five provided jobs for others, with an average of nearly two jobs provided for others per client.

·For every 100 women who receive training, an average of 245 local jobs are created and retained five years after graduation.

·With an average cost of $1,525 per woman served, a $1 million investment in Women’s Initiative’s programs would result in 132 new jobs being created within 12 months and a total of 480 new jobs in five years.

Congratulations to the strong clients of Women's Initiative who are having a significant impact on the Bay Area economy!

Finding your tribe of support

 

I attended two very inspirational events last week. And although the speakers had extremely different backgrounds, their messages were quite similar and right in line with the Women’s Initiative philosophy.

On Thursday, I attended the ERA luncheon with keynote speaker Arianna Huffington. Arianna talked about the need for women to not only break the glass ceiling and achieve success, but to do it differently. Women, she said, do things with empathy, which is exactly what the world needs now. If the Lehman Brothers had been the Lehman Sisters, things would be a lot different today!

She also talked about the personal obstacles women face, including facing our own worst critic in ourselves. Arianna refers to her inner critic as her ‘obnoxious roommate’. This is the voice that tells you you can’t do it, you’re too old, you’re too fat, you don’t know what you’re doing. The challenge is getting past that inner critic. Arianna’s book On Becoming Fearless addresses this and says that fearlessness is not the absence of fear, but the ability to not let your fears stop you. The key she said is to form our own tribe of people who support us. People who lift us up and tell the obnoxious roommate to shut up.

On Friday morning, I went to the Women’s Initiative North Bay Fundraising Breakfast. We had several guest speakers, including our own charismatic Julie Abrams, and Alison Davis from Belvedere Capital, one of the most influential women in Bay Area business. But the most powerful speaker that morning was Mara.

Mara is a recent graduate of Women’s Initiative. Mara’s background is about as far from Arianna Huffington’s as you could imagine. Her mother was an alcoholic so Mara was left to care for her younger siblings as her mother was either absent or unable to care for them. Her father physically abused her mother. At 17 Mara could no longer take it and ran away from home, despite the guilt she felt at leaving her younger siblings. She soon married her boyfriend and found herself with two babies and in a not much better situation than what she had left. Her husband was verbally abusive, telling Mara that she was useless, that she would never survive on her own, and that her children would starve.

Despite that, Mara did find the strength to leave. Shortly after, she saw an interview on television with a Women’s Initiative graduate. A Latina like herself who had started her own business and become successful. Inspired but scared, Mara called Women’s Initiative and signed up for the business training course. There, she found a warm, caring group of women who never told her that she couldn’t do it, but only gave her words of encouragement and helped her discover her own path to success. She had found her own tribe of supportive women.

Mara’s goal is to start a local publication for Latina women that addresses the issues of domestic violence, self esteem, raising children in the United States and other issues that Latinas face. Mara doesn’t just want to succeed, but she wants to give back and help other women.

I’m confident that Mara will succeed, and that she will do it differently. She will do it with empathy and with a tribe of supporters.

Cause of Death: Bad Neighborhoods

Although life expectancy in the US has increased by 30 years in the last century, if you live in a neighborhood with high poverty rates, chances are, you and your family can’t expect to live as long as those living in affluent communities. People who live in West Oakland die an average of 10 years earlier than those who live the Berkeley Hills and Bay View/Hunter’s Point residents die 14 years earlier than those living on Russian Hill.

A report published in Race Poverty and the Environment, a project of Urban Habitat shows that the neighborhood you live in directly impacts your health.

Bob Prentice, Director of the Bay Area Regional Health Inequities Initiative (BARHII) writes that physical and social improvements such as food and water sanitations, workplace and traffic safety, declines in tobacco use, and housing conditions have contributed more to life expectancy than advances in antibiotics and vaccines over the past century.

Community economic development may have more than an economic impact on low-income communities; it may help people in these communities live longer and healthier lives. Women’s Initiative has been awarded a grant from the UCSF’s University Community Partnerships Council to investigate the relationship between economic development and health. Together with our university partners, Dr. Claire Brindis and Dr. Mary Kreger and at the Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies at UCSF Women’s Initiative will be studying the impact of microenterprise development on community health and well-being, especially that of mothers and their children.

"Miss Karen's Krew"

Recent Women's Initiative graduate Oriana Bolden created this heartwarming video about her Simple Steps class at Women's Initiative, led by trainer Karen Auguste. These 3 short minutes really capture the warmth, support and community that happens in our classes.

Thank you Oriana!

Women's Initiative in San Francisco Magazine

Beautiful article in this month's San Francisco Magazine on 'Reinvention'. Women's Initiative CEO Julie Castro Abrams is quoted and graduates Isabella Guajardo and Emily Dods are featured.

Hamburg's Blog on Women's Initiative

Liz Hamburg, founder and president of Upstart Ventures was in the Bay Area last week for the Microfinance USA 2010 conference. She spent a few days with Women’s Initiative, learning more about what we do and meeting our clients. Read about her experiences in her blog.

More in Need and Little Relief in Sight

Are Bay Area non-profits keeping up with the recession? The United Way’s recently released Bay Area Nonprofit Pulse Survey indicates that while non-profits are doing more with less, just three percent are seeing improvements, and one in four have had to eliminate services.

More than six in ten non-profits reported an increase in demand for services last year and four in ten were not able to meet those demands.

Unlike for-profit businesses, demand and revenues often negatively correlate in the non-profit sector. Since the beginning of the Great Recession growing demand for services has been accompanied by declining revenues from both private and public sources. More than half of non-profits reported a drop in revenues in 2009.

Many non-profits reported tapping into reserves to cover costs last year which will be painfully felt in coming years if demand for services remains high. Anne Wilson, CEO of United Way of the Bay Area says that those hit hardest by the recession may take years to get back on their feet.

Other ways that non-profits are stretching resources include collaborating with other organizations such as the United Way’s SparkPoint Oakland Center to bring together a number of non-profit organizations including Women’s Initiative for Self Employment. Non-profit organizations are also working with more volunteers to increase levels and quality of service without increasing costs.

"Women of Vision" Gala

 

Our 8^th Annual Gala, held at the Hilton Union Square on May 13^th was a huge success. Approximately 600 of the Bay Area’s business leaders came out to support Women’s Initiative, celebrate our honorees and shop in the graduate marketplace.

Lydia Beebe, corporate secretary and chief governance officer of Chevron received the Founder’s Award for her commitment to providing leadership opportunities for women. Women’s Initiative graduates Isabella Guajardo of Gil with a Truck and Doris Shahrokhimanesh of Abe’s Blazin’ Spice BBQ received the Woman Entrepreneur on the Rise awards.

More than 20 Women’s Initiative graduates had booths in the marketplace. Guests of the gala shopped for jewelry, hats, candles, clothes and other unique items, spending nearly $20,000 with our graduate businesses!

The Gala is our largest fundraiser of the year. In addition to money raised through sponsorships and ticket sales, we raised more than $100,000 in donations at the event. As the recession continues to take its toll on non-profits, the support of our generous donors is more important than ever.

Below are some photos of the event, courtesy of photographer Jennifer Baciocco.

Nancy McFadden of PG&E and Gala co-chair, presents the award to Isabella Guajardo of Girl with a Truck

Graduate honoree Doris Shahrokhimanesh of Abe's Blazin' Spice BBQ

Women's Initiative Governing Board members Rita Steel and Michele Grau-Young, Founder's Award recipient Lydia Beebe, and Women's Initiative CEO Julie Castro Abrams.

Mompreneurs

Mothers who can’t find sufficient healthy food for their children are taking matters into their own hands, according to Dale Buss of the Wall Street Journal. These women are combining their knowledge of children with the need for healthier food to create small businesses that focus on healthy snacks and organic baby food. In his article, The Mothers of Invention, Buss describes these “mompreneurs” as women who are using this opportunity as a “chance to achieve a work-life balance they never found in the corporate world.”

At Women’s Initiative, 27% of clients are single parents. Many working women face the struggle of providing care to their children while financially supporting themselves and their families. Flexible work schedules through self-employment can help provide a solution, although balancing work and family life is still not an easy challenge.

The “mompreneurs” in Buss’ article are still facing challenges, including how to maintain growth and adapt to market needs in a weak economy.

By 2007, 70% of mothers with children under 18 participated in the US labor force (compared to only 47% in 1975). Self-employment can provide women with confidence, financial independence, an outlet to take full advantage of their skills and give back to their community, and an opportunity to create flexible schedules to balance work and family.

With an economically depressed economy and high unemployment rates (10% nationally and 12.4% in California), this need for new strategies to achieve self-sufficiency is growing. Today, Women’s Initiative graduates more than twice as many women annually than 5 years ago.

So, You Want To Be An Entrepreneur?

 

In The Wall Street Journal’s “So, You Want to Be an Entrepreneur”, Kelly K. Spors writes that while entrepreneurs come from all sorts of backgrounds and personalities, there are still certain attributes that improve the odds that one will be happy and successful with one’s business. Before taking the entrepreneurial plunge, one should ask:

• Do I like all aspects of running a business? You have to do it all, at least in the beginning, from creating the product to marketing and sales to bookkeeping and administration. If you hire an employee, you have to do all the training.
• Am I comfortable making decisions on the fly with no playbook? You have to be a decisive decision-maker. In the beginning, there is no structure or precedent.
• How persuasive am I? You have to sell others on your passion. You have to cold-call potential leads, network, and be willing to argue why your product is worth buying.

Are women who come to Women’s Initiative for Self Employment ready to take the entrepreneurial plunge? What stage of the entrepreneurial process are women in when they first come to Women’s Initiative?

Speaking with one of our business trainers, I learned that the average client already has her product and business idea in mind. She is confident in her skill set (be it cooking, cleaning, crafts) and has experience working in her field. She is capable and willing to learn, and the reason she comes into Women’s Initiative is because she has gotten stuck and seeks access to training and resources that she can’t find by herself.

Interestingly, the trainer said she found that more than just the business training, it is the sense of empowerment that women walk away with when they graduate from the course. More than learning the basic accounting, it is the confidence a woman gains that helps her communicate professionally and successfully convey what she wants.

So, you want to be an entrepreneur? Women’s Initiative has found that more than just the business training, it is the sense of empowerment, the chance to network, and be part of a larger support group where a woman can share her successes and mistakes that women entrepreneurs value most and which ultimately contribute, to her business success.