Starting Small… Thinking Big. A Women’s Initiative Blog

Women's Initiative Talks Job Creation with Nancy Pelosi

 
Women’s Initiative was honored to host an event in celebration of Women’s Equality Day with Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi.

The event took place on Thursday, August 25, at Women’s Initiative graduate business, Casa Bonampak in San Francisco’s Mission District. Five graduates of the Women’s Initiative Simple Steps program, as well as four clients of Working Solutions, a nonprofit organization which provides microentrepreneurs with access to capital and resources, set up showcases of their businesses and spoke with Congresswoman Pelosi about their businesses, the jobs they have created, and how owning a business has improved their lives. After Congresswoman Pelosi met each of the business owners, they were seated at a roundtable to discuss job creation and issues facing women small business owners today.

The Congresswoman said that current budget decisions will have an impact on women and that Washington must ensure that the budget focuses on keeping the entrepreneurial spirit alive in this country. Julie Castro Abrams, CEO of Women’s Initiative, thanked Congresswoman Pelosi for being such an inspiring mentor to all women and for being an advocate of Women’s Initiative. Abrams said that Congresswoman Pelosi’s support of Women’s Initiative has helped create jobs, but that she must keep fighting the good fight and ensure that microenterprise development is included in Washington’s job creation strategy. Mark Quinn, district director of the SBA, underscored that all new jobs are coming from small business. 

ABC7 and SF Gate/Mission Local covered the event.

Click here to see Congresswoman Pelosi's newsletter about the event

You can help women business owners continue to create new jobs by contacting your congressperson and asking them to make sure the jobs bill includes support of SBA Women's Business centers.  

 Women's Initiative Graduates participating in the event:

Nancy Charraga
Casa Bonampak
1051 Valencia St., San Francisco www.casabonampak.com Created four jobs

Sharone Mendes
Carmel Blue Pregnancy and Parenting
1418 Grant St. San Francisco http://carmelblue.com
Created three jobs plus employment for many contractors

Kelly Smith
Rubber Ducky Soap Company www.rubberduckysoap.com Created four jobs

Josey White
The Front Porch Restaurant
65a 29th Street
San Francisco, CA www.thefrontporch.com
Created 19 jobs

Cristina Arantes
Kika’s Treats
www.kikastreats.com

Non-Profits not Necessary?

Posted by Guest Author

Gabriel Germanow, Women’s Initiative Fellow

A recent column in the San Francisco Chronicle advised interim Mayor Ed Lee to slash city funding for non-profit organizations. San Francisco is facing a projected $380 million budget deficit for 2011, so fixing the budget is necessarily one of Mr. Lee’s primary concerns. However, cutting funding for non-profit organizations is not the way to improve the efficiency of city government.

The author of the SF Chronicle column, C.W. Nevius, suggests that Mr. Lee cut funding for non-profits because “many of the programs provide overlapping services, aren't required to prove they are making an impact, and don't always need to account for how they've spent the city's money.” What Mr. Nevius neglects to recognize is the important role non-profit organizations play in society.

Non-profits provide tremendous value in this day and age. As a third branch of society – uniquely different from government and business – non-profit civil society helps to fill many of the gaps (and the people who fall through them) not explicitly addressed by government or business activity. Non-profits provide important social services for the hungry and homeless; they protect the environment from negative impacts; they build community; and they foster and promote social justice.

Moreover, civil society is a crucial partner in San Francisco’s efforts to improve city life. Non-profits help complement the services provided by government, in many cases channeling or directing public funding to those who need it most. It is arguable, in fact, that the work of government and civil society are both improved by mutual collaboration. Cutting non-profits from the city’s budget, then, would, only serve to impede important work being done to better our local community.

Women’s Initiative is one organization whose funding might be threatened by cutting non-profits from the city budget. Over the past 22 years, Women’s Initiative has served more than 20,000 women and built their entrepreneurial capacity to overcome economic and social barriers through comprehensive business training and support. This organization, like so many others, offers important services to an under-served segment of the population.

Though a $380 million city budget deficit is nothing to sneer at, simply cutting non-profit funding is not the way to go. Rather, like Mr. Nevius later states, San Francisco ought to put better systems in place to help non-profits improve reporting and accountability on their finances, management and outcomes. Demanding increased accountability would actually do non-profits an important service and would force organizations not meeting their mission to think hard about how they can improve their work.

Though San Francisco faces many challenges, non-profit organizations play a crucial role in helping better the city. They deserve our ongoing attention and support.

Empowerment: Getting Women Working in a Women’s America

It's no secret that those of us here tonight have had our differences over the last two years. The debates have been contentious; we have fought fiercely for our beliefs. And that's a good thing. That's what a robust democracy demands. That's what helps set us apart as a nation.

President Obama uttered these lines introducing his third State of the Union Address. Women stood with the president as he made his way down the center aisle. The 112^th congress sat down in a new seating arrangement, democrat next to republican, with hope to restore civility on the hill and to display respect for representative Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona.

17 women form a record 17% of the Senate. At a record 17.47%, 76 of the 435 members of Congress are women. Currently 3 of the 9 Supreme Court justices are women in large part due to recent appointments. 7 was the record for most women serving as state governors at 14% until Sarah Palin resigned, leaving 6 current women governors at 12%.

The president’s speech follows a fierce two years of vibrant and at times aggressive political opposition. Obama mentioned winning the future as a nation, hopefully an economically secure future that women are becoming more a part of everyday. But how, you ask, can our future look so good if right now things are looking so bad? That has to do with the very thread of our liberal society.

By liberal I don’t mean elitist, blue-state democrats. On the contrary, I mean to include anyone who supports a legitimate democracy. The ideas that make up classic liberalism are so obvious and accepted today that we hardly stop to think carefully about them or what it means to live in a liberal society.

The fact that the United States is a liberal society is made evident by the value we place on material goods. This is why I was able to count no fewer than 200 different cereal options during my last trip to the supermarket. That we are a liberal society is why more women are now graduating from college than men are. Individualism, competition, the right to property, small government, and private business, these values are all a part of classic liberalism.

Liberalism is the American ideology because as a culture, the United States has formed its social conventions upon these founding principles. The way we think about ourselves in relation to others, status, what we conceive of as progress or achievement and how we work for it, the status quo, indeed our whole worldview is largely shaped by liberal values.

So you might be thinking, what does any of this have to do with a secure future for women? Loads. I’m talking about entitlement, enfranchisement, and empowerment. Aminur Rahman of the International Development Research Centre in Ottawa, Canada studies the social impact of microcredit on women in the Third World. He makes a fundamental distinction between entitlement, enfranchisement, and empowerment.

As Rahman explains in his book, Women and Microcredit in Rural Bangladesh, entitlement is one’s prerogative; it is their right to having something, be it a material good or a right or a freedom. Enfranchisement describes one’s ability to participate in decisions about their own entitlement. Empowerment is about action; it is the power one evokes by acting on their rights or freedoms. These three E’s can be thought of as steps in a staircase because reaching a higher step necessitates the successful achievement of an earlier step.

These three E’s are useful for thinking about how women are laying claim to their rightful position in American public culture. In fact just to think that women are deserving of equal status is testimony to the entitlement women now hold. Suffrage, or the civil right to vote, is also known as “political franchise.” Congress voted to pass the Nineteenth Amendment to our Constitution granting women’s suffrage in 1920. Women became legally entitled to the same rights as men that year. But this is not to say that men and women have nothing left to strive for.

It is a fact that women doing the same work at the same job are paid less than men. There exist large gaps between the sexes in metrics measuring income, wealth, and business ownership. If the government distribution amongst the sexes weren’t skewed enough, reports suggest only 13% of partners at Goldman Sachs (Wall Street’s elite) are women. These contrasts suggest real equality is not a historical event but a significant goal America is still working towards. The good news is that gaps in economic and political achievement are narrowing steadily. The beauty of our liberal nation is that real equality can be achieved in a foreseeable future.

Women’s Initiative works to empower women by helping them realize that they have the power to build assets, be safe, and achieve prosperity. Woman leadership and self-employment are not about politics or ideology but about taking ownership and making equality an active process with lasting results, starting with business. These positive changes in business translate as social empowerment in every other part of women’s lives. Women can make a big impact in winning the future by working for themselves. Business and competition care not about sex or gender but about merit because as our president said tonight, it is what our democracy demands. 

A Plan for Creating New and Rewarding Jobs

With unemployment rates still well over 9% nationally and poverty at an all-time high, I have been struggling since President Obama’s State of the Union Address this week to understand how the president’s plan is going to create new and rewarding jobs, especially for those hit hardest by the recession – women and women of color.

Although most new job creation in the US has been in small business and most small business growth is happening among women- and immigrant-owned business, the president’s plan does little to leverage the most promising area for job creation in the US – microenterprises run by women and immigrant entrepreneurs.

The tax write offs for small business that the president mentioned will have the greatest benefits for the small businesses with the highest revenues. These tax write offs will have little impact on microenterprises, which by definition require relatively little capital investment.

Women’s Initiative graduates created and retained 3,818 jobs in the Bay Area in 2010 alone. This is an impressive number but microenterprise organizations like Women’s Initiative are only serving a fraction of their potential target population because of lack of funding and government support.

In fact, an investment in microenterprise development would address some of the other issues the president spoke about, including the need for public investments in R&D and clean transportation and energy technologies in order to compete with other nations such as India and China. Small firms in the US produce 13 times more patents per employee than large patenting firms; these patents are twice as likely as large firm patents to be among the one percent most cited. In addition, the majority of Women’s Initiative graduates start “green” businesses with innovative approaches to eliminating pollution and keeping their carbon footprint to a minimum.

Finally, the president spoke about our need for educational reform to meet the growing demand for a college educated workforce. The most powerful determinants of a child’s educational success are the mother’s employment status and income. There are millions of low-income mothers who dream of starting a business today so she can support her family and provide a safe, secure future for her children.

Everyone deserves a Ms. Waters, the principle the president told us the students thanked for showing them that they were smart and could make it. The women entrepreneurs who come to Women’s Initiative build lasting connections to a network of supportive women who show them that they are smart and can make it and 70% are still in business five years after training.

A plan to win the future must include microenterprise development for women and women of color and the support they need to win a future for themselves, their families, and communities.

Realizing King's Dream

Today, as we celebrate the life of Martin Luther King, I am reminded that his fight was not just for racial equality, but also for economic equality.  In April 1967, he addressed this issue in a speech at Stanford Univeristy:

 There are literally two Americas .  One America is beautiful for situation.  And, in a sense, this America is overflowing with the milk of prosperity and the honey of opportunity.  This America is the habitat of millions of people who have food and material necessities for their bodies; and culture and education for their minds; and freedom and human dignity for their spirits.  In this America , millions of people experience every day the opportunity of having life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness in all of their dimensions.  And in this America millions of young people grow up in the sunlight of opportunity

But tragically and unfortunately, there is another America .  This other America has a daily ugliness about it that constantly transforms the ebulliency of hope into the fatigue of despair. In this America millions of work-starved men walk the streets daily in search for jobs that do not exist.  In this America millions of people find themselves living in rat-infested, vermin-filled slums.  In this America people are poor by the millions.  They find themselves perishing on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity.

But we must see that the struggle today is much more difficult.  It’s more difficult today because we are struggling now for genuine equality.  And it’s much easier to integrate a lunch counter than it is to guarantee a livable income and a good solid job.  And so today we are struggling for something which says we demand genuine equality.

With poverty at an all-time high and the wealth gap at record highs as well, King’s “Other America” continues to be all too real.  It continues to be true that women, women of color and single mothers run the greatest risk of living in poverty. 

Every day at Women’s Initiative, we see the power of economic equality.  Women who have become successful business women and increased their income and assets improve the lives of themselves, their families, and their communities. They're pulling themselves up, regaining dignity and feeling safe and secure.  By achieving economic self sufficiency and becoming community leaders, these women not only are living their own dream, but Dr. King's as well.

 

 

 

 

Challenges in the Year Ahead

Reading the news at the start of this year, I learned in Equality, a True Soul Food (NYT 1/1/2011) that the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans possesses a greater collective net worth than the bottom 90 percent.

Let that sink in…

Almost all of the people in America own collectively less than the wealthiest one percent! Trying to imagine this, I see a room of 100 people. If 90 of these people owned one car, the one hundredth would own more than ninety cars!

In reality though, we know that many of those ninety people wouldn’t even own a car or have enough to afford basic expenses such as medical care, housing, or food.

Inequality isn’t just a problem impacting the poorest of the poor. It impacts everyone, causing anxiety and distrust as well as mental and physical ailments such as heart disease, suicide, and cancer. There is much evidence that violent crime such as gang violence is directly related to inequality.

In 2010 Women’s Initiative helped 895 women become economically self-sufficient and create 3,818 jobs for themselves and others through their businesses but inequality still grew at a faster pace nationally. Our challenge in 2011 will be to scale our programs even faster, so every woman in the US will know she has the power to keep her family safe, build assets and achieve prosperity.

How Women's Initiative is a Key Player in the Fight against the Widening Income Disparity Gap in America

 

NPR reported last week about the growing income gap in America : “While almost everyone in America thinks of themselves as middle class, income disparities are wide and getting wider. While wages stagnated for almost everybody in the middle or even went down, the rich got richer these past 30 years. Venezuela and Nicaragua now have more equitable pay than the United States. Over time, the effect of these disparities and the narrowing of the social ladder can corrode faith that life is fair and that the rules make sense.” (You can listen to the full story here.)

Women’s Initiative is working to pull up low-income earners through our unique microenterprise training program, where our graduates learn to start and maintain their own businesses. This not only results in employment for them, but contributes to the building of an important personal asset – the business itself.

Business equity ranks second to homeownership as a share of overall household wealth in this country – so building the asset of their business is an important step toward vaulting past this gap. And business ownership is an asset which can be a bridge to home ownership.

Women’s Initiative focuses exclusively on training for low income women. For these women, particularly those with barriers to traditional wage employment, home ownership is often an unattainable dream. Yet through our program, where over 70% of our training graduates have been in business for over 5 years, building business equity – as a primary asset which can be leveraged to purchase a home – will help us in closing the wealth gap once and for all.

Women’s Initiative Offers to Help Los Angeles Spend Stimulus Funds

Dear Los Angeles Public Works and Transportation Departments,

I was sorry to read in David Zahniser’s article in the Los Angeles Times (09/17/2010) that you have been struggling to spend the $111 million in stimulus funds you have been awarded and that you have so far only managed to create 55 jobs.

It must be very slow indeed to secure government approval of contracts. I understand that you plan to eventually create or retain 264 jobs when you get around to spending the funds.

I am very impressed to hear that you have decided to begin looking for ways to streamline the contracting process and that you hope to start seeing changes in six months.

Women’s Initiative for Self Employment has been struggling too. We have waiting lists of low-income women, most without employment, wanting to take our business plan training course so they can create jobs for themselves and others by starting a business, but we just don’t have enough funding to add more courses this year.

So, like your agency, we have just had to do the best we could. We don’t have nearly the budget that you do but we have managed to provide business training to more women than ever in this past year. In 2009, 1,195 women graduated from our business plan training course. Our data to date indicates that these women will likely create and retain 1,123 jobs for themselves and others by the end of this year at an average cost of just over $4K per job.

I know this is nothing compared to the really expensive jobs that you are beginning to figure out how to create, but it’s a start.

If you find that you don’t really have the time – or if it’s just too much of a struggle – to begin looking for ways to spend the federal stimulus funding you have been awarded to create jobs, just let us know. We would be more than happy to help.

The low-income women who are waiting to get into our courses and these women’s families would really appreciate it as well.

Yours sincerely,

Elizabeth de Renzy

Call for policies that create jobs through microenterprise development for Latinas

Together with leaders from other civil rights, labor, and student organizations, NCLR is leading One Nation Working Together, a national campaign to call for policies to create jobs and invest in a strong economic future. A major feature of the campaign is an historic rally scheduled to take place in Washington, DC on October 2, 2010. Click here to learn more about One Nation Working Together.

Business ownership has historically been one of the most effective ways for low-skilled Hispanic entrepreneurs to increase income and build assets in the US. The self-employment rate of Latinas is rapidly growing, especially in the states along the US-Mexico border. Nevertheless, disparities in business ownership still exist. Latina entrepreneurs face challenges both in starting and growing their businesses. Training, networking, and mentoring opportunities are often limited and there is unequal access to capital resulting from discriminatory treatment in both the public and private sectors.

An investment in microenterprise development targeting the low-income Latinas would create jobs, build assets, and reduce poverty among Hispanic families.

At the height of the recession, nine in ten un- and underemployed women who received microenterprise training through Women’s Initiative entered employment or self-employment within the first year after training. More than one in ten provided jobs for others within the first year.

Small businesses are the foundation of American neighborhoods and small towns. They provide jobs and increase the purchasing power that will stimulate the local economy. Business ownership has played an important role in the upward economic mobility of immigrants. Self-employment rates for Latinas, especially immigrants, are growing at a rapid pace but disparities still exist. Microenterprise development services are an import part of the solution to escalating poverty and unemployment rates among Latinos.

Join Women's Initiative by calling for policies that create jobs through microenterprise development for women, especially Latinas and immigrants.

Are Recovery Act Tax Credits for Businesses Working?

Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office is looking for feedback from local business owners who have taken advantage of the Work Opportunity Tax Credit (WOTC) for businesses.

The WOTC offers tax savings to businesses that hire workers belonging to any of 12 targeted groups, including unemployed veterans and disconnected youth. The other 10 include people ages 18 to 39 living in designated communities in 43 states and the District of Columbia, Hurricane Katrina employees, recipients of various types of public assistance, and certain veterans, summer youth workers and ex-felons.

The Speaker’s staff have asked Women’s Initiative for our help finding business owners who were able to take advantage of the tax credit.

If you have taken advantage the WOTC, please contact Elizabeth de Renzy at (510) 287-3117 or ederenzy@womensinitiative.org. And please forward this message to your network!

Don’t miss this opportunity ensure that your voice is heard by our decision makers in DC!