SYLMAR : College to Offer Training to Vendors

Mission College will start an entrepreneurial training program this summer that will target street vendors living on Blythe Street in Panorama City who are interested in starting businesses in culinary arts.

The one-year program, which will be funded by a $250,000 grant, will instruct the vendors on issues ranging from sanitation to health department regulations in the hopes they will start legitimate businesses and eventually create jobs.

“We’re getting a group of people who just want to make a living. We want to show them how to do it right,” said Penny Young, director of the college’s business and professional center, who will oversee the training program.

Young said the program was proposed after residents, landlords and social service agencies raised concerns about the safety and sanitation hazards posed by nearly 100 Blythe Street vendors who prepare food out of their homes.

The college will rent a large commercial kitchen near Blythe Street to give the vendors hands-on training in food preparation, she said.

The training program, scheduled to begin in August, is one of five funded under a $2-million allocation from the Community Development Department of the city of Los Angeles.

Genny Alberts, who owns two apartment buildings on Blythe Street, said many of her tenants who are vendors plan to participate in the training program. “They want to properly integrate themselves into the system,” she said.