Program Turns Sense of Despair Into Business Sense

Shaunna Griffith never imagined she would become a welfare mother, but she had little choice after her husband vanished three years ago.

An at-home mother left to care for her four children, Griffith quickly realized she could never make it without public assistance.

Now something else is happening that she never thought possible--she owns her own business. Griffith is one of 12 people who recently graduated from the first class of a new welfare-to-entrepreneurship program funded by the city of Los Angeles and run by the Van Nuys-based Valley Economic Development Center, a nonprofit business assistance agency.

Griffith has completed the center’s intense 10-week course, called “Microenterprise Training Program,” which provides candidates with the motivation and assistance to start their own businesses.

With a $275,000 grant from the city, the Valley center will train 80 to 100 welfare recipients over the next year. A second city-funded program, to be run by the Pacific Asian Consortium and Employment Center in Los Angeles, has begun recruiting its first class.

As part of the program, each graduate received an average of $200 to obtain a business license. A few have also secured small-business loans--from $850 to $2,000--from the center to get started.

The businesses, many of which will operate out of the graduates’ homes, include pool maintenance, housecleaning, candy-making and an alternative health Web site.

“About 75% of people who receive welfare don’t live off their welfare check alone,” said Cheryl Walters, manager of the Microenterprise Training Program. “They’re already running businesses out of their home. We want to teach them how to do it right.”

The course, taught by the center’s staff, consists of five parts: business idea development, marketing, records and bookkeeping, financing options and setting up the business.

Instruction includes such things as researching an idea and writing a mission statement, identifying the target customer, getting a credit report, establishing a fictitious name and obtaining a business license.

Students attend class six hours a week, during which they get individual help from the Valley Economic Development Center staff in creating large signboards, fliers and cards to advertise their businesses.

“I just came in here with an idea, but I didn’t know what to do with it or how to market it,” said Griffith, 38, of Burbank. “The classes were a lot of time and work and they were very hard, but very worth it.”

Lost Children Sparks Idea

Griffith’s business, Close Range Communications, will rent walkie-talkies and cellular phones at such places as amusement parks where groups or families often unwillingly get split up.

“I got the idea when I was at Disneyland a few years ago,” Griffith said. “I lost my kids and searched three hours for them.”

Wendolyne Valle, a 25-year-old single mother who went on welfare earlier this year after losing her job as a supermarket cashier, is another recent graduate. She is pinning her entrepreneurial hopes on gelatin.

For years, she and an aunt have been molding unusual designs with gelatin in their small Reseda apartment. They hand-paint their creations--dinosaurs, pumpkins and storks, for example--and sell the items to friends and neighbors having baby showers, children’s birthday parties and other festive events.

Because her business, World of Gelatin, deals with food, Valle must obtain a county health license, which requires that any food product be prepared in an industrial, county-inspected facility.

Valle’s uncle, Richard de la Fontan, is helping her secure a loan to lease a small kitchen with the help and guidance of the Valley center staff.

“I had no idea what I had to go through to open a business,” Valle said. “I’ve known that I wanted it, but didn’t know how to do it. This is like a dream.”

Lynne Nixon, a high school dropout on welfare, is also amazed that she actually owns a business.

Course Helps Build Self-Esteem

Nixon, who said she was left about 10 years ago by her high school boyfriend to raise their two kids, has found that graduating from the Microenterprise program has dramatically improved her self-esteem.

“I used to be ashamed, real ashamed that I was on welfare,” Nixon, 39, said. “Now I’m proud and motivated. I had this idea that seemed far-fetched and they helped me learn how to make it into a real business.”

Her business, Health and Harmony, will specialize in providing information about homeopathic remedies, vitamins, teas and herbs.

Customers will come to Nixon’s home for consultations, which will be arranged via her Web site. The site will also help her to market her business and communicate with potential customers.

“I can’t wait to get off of welfare and make my kids proud,” Nixon said. “Opening this business is going to help me do it.”

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The next 10-week “Microenterprise Training Program” for people on welfare begins Oct. 25 at the Valley Economic Development headquarters in Van Nuys. For more information, call (818) 907-9977.