PANORAMA CITY : College Offers Classes for Street Vendors

After forsaking a high school education to survive on the streets, Jorge Hernandez was back in the classroom again on Thursday, this time in an attempt to preserve the way of life he has carved out for himself as a street vendor.

“I want to keep my business,” said Hernandez, 21, a shaved-ice vendor from Puebla, Mexico, as he sat in on an entrepreneurial training class in his Panorama City apartment building. “Since I don’t have any resources to do something different, this program is going to help me a lot.”

The pilot program, taught five days a week by instructors from Mission College’s business and professional center, recently began for nearly two dozen vendors. The program is funded by a $250,000 grant from the Industry and Commercial Development Department of Los Angeles.

The class is being held in a decaying building in the 14700 block of Blythe Street that was cited last month for hazardous conditions by fire, health and building inspectors. Some of the vendors fled the building after the citations, but others, like Hernandez, stayed with the hopes of benefiting from the classes. None of them have graduated high school, college officials said.

Hernandez and the other vendors showed up for Thursday’s two-hour class at 8 a.m. and took notes on the lecture by Eloise Cantrell, who was teaching a three-day workshop on sanitation and safety.

Much of the lecture focused on ways to prevent bacteria from contaminating foods, from washing hands to keeping food cold. Other classes include food preparation and business fundamentals.

Penny Young, director of Mission College’s business and professional center, hopes to draw more than 100 vendors into the program by the end of the year. She hopes the program’s students can preserve their livelihoods through changing their habits--forming a community kitchen or going into other food-service work.

After only two weeks of classes, some vendors already say they believe that a change is brewing.

“They are teaching us hygiene, how to treat our clients, how to prevent the sickness from bacteria and how to do better business,” said Juvenal Perez, 52, a corn vendor. “Now it’s going to be different.”