CRENSHAW : Students Create Own Jobs--and Prosper
A group of Crenshaw-area college students is getting a crash course in creative financing.
Strapped for school funds and faced with dismal job prospects, several students on summer break put their heads together and came up with Run Us Around, a multi-service business that offers customers help with everything from housecleaning to chauffeuring.
While such tasks may seem menial to some, particularly to those who say that domestic work should remain firmly in the past of African Americans, student Misty Wilks said joining forces to start a business--any business--is a step in the right economic direction for young people.
“We were all independently trying to make money, and it was tough,” said Wilks, 22, a law student at Howard University in Washington, D.C. “We all sat around and put in individual ideas, and everybody came up with at least one. We were all game for it.”
Wilks, who got the company going a month ago with fellow student David Moats, runs the operation out of her Crenshaw-area home. Run Us Around also offers moving services, dry-cleaning pickup and delivery, hair braiding, party planning and gift shopping and consulting.
Services run from $5 per miscellaneous errand to $60 for cleaning an empty two-bedroom house before a person moves in (windows and wall washing included). For about $75, the students will provide complete maid service for a similar sized dwelling.
The colleges that students attend include USC, Cal State Dominguez Hills and Los Angeles Trade Tech, a local community college. Moats, 25, said their aim is to combine individual work backgrounds and skills to make the services as accessible, and affordable, as possible. They offer moving services at $30 an hour, for example, compared to about $75 an hour at some larger outfits.
Since launching last month, the group has garnered about 10 jobs, mostly housecleaning and grocery shopping. They’ve tried drumming up business at senior centers and other places in the Crenshaw and central L.A. areas, and interest is slowly but steadily growing.
Patricia Vasher said she had extra incentive to hire Run Us Around to clean her house. “They’re students, and I’m always willing to do something to help them,” she said. “And they did a good job too. I have no complaints about the work.”
The group also is getting some business assistance: Inglewood realtor Jay Martin has offered the students free computer use and a slew of leads for large-scale housecleaning jobs.
Wilks said that if each member can earn $500 to $600 apiece for books, tuition and living expenses, the group will have accomplished its summer mission. To Tracy Handcox, every little bit helps.
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“I have two children, and I have to figure out a way to work, go to school and raise them,” said Handcox, 21, a student at Los Angeles Southwest College who eventually wants to become a pediatrician. “I have to do what it takes to make money to do all those things.”
Wilks said she was forced to give up a legal internship in Washington this summer after her financial aid ran out. But she said the experience of forming a small-scale business is providing a unique educational opportunity.
Information: (213) 294-7606.
