Success Is in Cards for Black Youngsters : Enterprise: Umoja Children’s greeting card business makes money while filling a niche in the community.

After a hard day’s work, board members of the Umoja greeting card company usually head to the pool for a swim.

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An odd company policy, perhaps, except that the eldest of the group is 21 and the youngest 7.

They call themselves the Umoja Children--the “Youth from the Hood Working for Good.” In two years, they have made $150,000 selling black-oriented greeting cards across the country.

“It’s a lot of fun and it’s a learning experience,” said Nicole Seivers, 14, who spent a recent summer morning in front of a computer mapping Umoja’s profit and loss statement.

If it weren’t for Umoja--which means unity in Swahili--board members said they’d be sleeping or watching television. Instead, they spent four weeks this summer at the Baltimore City Community College learning the “four P’s” of business: product, price, place and promotion.

The card business grew out of a youth workshop project suggested by the Rev. Curtis Jones, pastor of the Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church, and his associate pastor, the Rev. Karen Brown.

After considering making key chains and T-shirts to raise money, the young people discovered that the greeting card industry generates $2.4 billion yearly, said Ernest Harris, 21, Umoja’s president.

They were sold.

With $50,000 in seed money from Baltimore-based Abell Foundation, the Presbyterian Church in the USA and their own congregation’s donations, they contracted designs from Maryland Institute College of Art students and wrote the verses themselves. Barton Cotton Inc., a Baltimore greeting card manufacturer, prints the cards.

Some of the cards feature traditional Christmas scenes with a black Santa Claus or wise men.

Others illustrate scenes from the holiday Kwanzaa, which combines African traditions with black ideals, and lasts for a week starting Dec. 26 each year. Umoja--unity--is the first of seven principles celebrated each day of Kwanzaa.

The 20 members of Umoja’s board sell the cards themselves door to door at $11 for a box of 15, and also sell to some retailers, but the bulk of their business is wholesale. They sell boxes of cards for $6 apiece to black organizations, youth and church groups and schools.

The board members have taken business trips to such cities as Philadelphia, Chicago, Atlanta, New York, Minneapolis and Cleveland to sell their cards to black groups.

Umoja Children made $43,000 selling 6,000 boxes the first year. Last year they sold 15,000 boxes, netting more than $100,000.

Brown, the executive director of the company, said Umoja’s goals are not simply to raise money but also to teach the young people self-sufficiency.

Located in once-wealthy Druid Hill, Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church now sits in an area where 40% of the residents live in poverty and many are on welfare, Brown said.

“Rev. Jones issued a challenge to us to become job creators instead of job seekers,” Harris said.

Recognizing the young people’s potential, Baltimore City Community College administrators agreed to conduct Umoja’s first business management institute this summer. Cortez Walker, their business management professor, said the children came to class savvy in the ways of the sales.

“These are unique children, so it’s fun working with them,” he said.