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

Beware of Immigration Scams

Con artists posing as legitimate immigration service providers recently charged an Oakland woman $675 for fake application forms, pseudo counseling, and a bogus appointment with immigration.

“They seemed so nice!” said the woman.

The scammers are very polite and professional seeming, giving victims the impression that they are legitimate. They fax their victims official looking forms and give detailed (albeit phony) instructions on the application and interview process.

“It’s not just the money, but all of the information we gave them!”

The swindlers, who called themselves Immigration Forms Profession Center, collected all kinds of information from the woman including her social security number, present and past contact information for her and her children, as well as her signature.

“I feel so stupid!” the woman said.

These crooks have developed a very sophisticated scheme for tricking unsuspecting people into believing that they can help them with their applications. They have legitimate looking websites, materials, and call centers. Beware of imposters asking for your personal information and checks for immigration application and processing fees.

The correct website of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service is www.uscis.gov.

To file a complaint in English or Spanish, visit the FTC’s online Complaint Assistant or call 1-877-FTC-HELP (1-877-382-4357).

For more information on immigration scams see the website of the Federal Trade Commission.

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.

So, You Want To Be An Entrepreneur?

In The Wall Street Journal’s “So, You Want to Be an Entrepreneur”, Kelly K. Spors writes that while entrepreneurs come from all sorts of backgrounds and personalities, there are still certain attributes that improve the odds that one will be happy and successful with one’s business. Before taking the entrepreneurial plunge, one should ask:

• Do I like all aspects of running a business? You have to do it all, at least in the beginning, from creating the product to marketing and sales to bookkeeping and administration. If you hire an employee, you have to do all the training.
• Am I comfortable making decisions on the fly with no playbook? You have to be a decisive decision-maker. In the beginning, there is no structure or precedent.
• How persuasive am I? You have to sell others on your passion. You have to cold-call potential leads, network, and be willing to argue why your product is worth buying.

Are women who come to Women’s Initiative for Self Employment ready to take the entrepreneurial plunge? What stage of the entrepreneurial process are women in when they first come to Women’s Initiative?

Speaking with one of our business trainers, I learned that the average client already has her product and business idea in mind. She is confident in her skill set (be it cooking, cleaning, crafts) and has experience working in her field. She is capable and willing to learn, and the reason she comes into Women’s Initiative is because she has gotten stuck and seeks access to training and resources that she can’t find by herself.

Interestingly, the trainer said she found that more than just the business training, it is the sense of empowerment that women walk away with when they graduate from the course. More than learning the basic accounting, it is the confidence a woman gains that helps her communicate professionally and successfully convey what she wants.

So, you want to be an entrepreneur? Women’s Initiative has found that more than just the business training, it is the sense of empowerment, the chance to network, and be part of a larger support group where a woman can share her successes and mistakes that women entrepreneurs value most and which ultimately contribute, to her business success.

Claiming Tax Credits Helps Stimulate the California Economy

A report published by the New America Foundation and economists at California State University at Fresno showed that one in five Californians who qualify for Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) will not claim these refunds. According to the report, this amounts to a loss of more than $1 billion for California’s economy because local businesses will lose out on sales that would have created thousands of jobs.

 

To learn if you are eligible for the EITC, go to www.weconnect.net, an initiative of California First Lady Maria Shriver or call 211 to learn about local free tax preparation services.

The recession has hit

I believe we can finally admit that we are in an economic recession. This morning on NPR I heard that the US job market has shrunk for the fifth month in a row, bringing the unemployment rate from 5 to 5.5 percent in the month of May.

What does this mean for microentrepreneurs and small business?

It means we need you more than ever!

Microenterprise and small business represent a huge portion of our domestic economy. Recent small business statistics published online by New Ground Publications (http://newgroundpublications.com) tell us that small business makes up 39% of the GNP, is responsible for 52% of sales and employs over 54 million people in the US!

Microenterprises have been able to create jobs during economically rough times. According to AEO microenterprise statistics (http://www.microenterpriseworks.org) microentrepreneurs in California generated more than 377, 000 new jobs and almost 80% of the job growth in the state during the last recession.

Women’s Initiative graduates are providing jobs for themselves and others. Nearly half (48%) of the graduates who start a business employ another person in addition to themselves.  The question isn’t really how microentrepreneurs will make it through the recession but how microentrepreneurs will help us all get through!

Good News for the Unbanked

Seventeen percent of our clients do not have bank accounts two years after training. Although this is slightly better than the statewide average, where one in five people are unbanked (as high as 50% of African American and Latinos), this means our clients are most likely wasting hundreds of dollars a year on check cashing fees and money orders. Predatory check cashing business are highly concentrated in low-income areas such as in the Mission District in San Francisco where our main office is located. In addition to having to pay much more for basic banking services, studies have shown that the unbanked are less likely to save and build assets.  At Women's Initiative we found out that following training, 44% more had business than they did before the program.

But there is more good news for our unbanked clients in San Francisco. The City has partnered with local bank and credit union branches to make banking accessible to all San Franciscans. Thanks to Treasurer Cisneros, the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, the non-profit EARN and the New America Foundation, nearly all bank and credit union branches in San Francisco have committed to offering low- or no-cost accounts to unbanked individuals, even those with a history of bounced checks. In addition, Mexican and Guatemalan Consular IDs are now being accepted as proof of identification.

Governor Schwarzenneger has announced that the program will soon include Oakland, Fresno, San Jose,and Los Angeles.

For more information on the program or opening an account visit: www.bankonsf.org

Friday Linkblogging: Microenterprise

• May 20-23 will be the first National Summit on Entrepreneurship in Anaheim California. More information is here.

• ABS-CBN News Online has an article about how a Filipino foundation is helping to break the cycle of migrant overseas labor by helping Filipinos to start businesses at home.

• The Citi Foundation and the SEEP Network are partnering on a new three-year $11.2 million international grant program "to advance the integration of microfinance inot the mainstream economies of developing countries."

• U.S. News and World Report online has some tips for how to steel your small business against recession. The main one is to keep marketing!

When money is tight, it's tempting to hold on to what you have and not worry about expanding your brand. But if you stop advertising and marketing, you'll do your business serious harm.

• Here's a terrific blog called How I Changed The World Today, about a woman's daily efforts to make the world a better place. She's been doing a lot with KIVA and international sponsorships so check it out for ideas for yourself, if you need any.

• Even the music industry is getting in on the microcredit action!

• And finally, this article in the Mercury News about Stanley Ann Dunham Soetoro, Barack Obama's mother, tells us that she spent the latter part of her life working in microcredit in Indonesia.

She became a consultant for the U.S. Agency for International Development on setting up a village credit program, then a Ford Foundation program officer in Jakarta specializing in women's work. Later, she was a consultant in Pakistan, then joined Indonesia's oldest bank to work on what is described as the world's largest sustainable microfinance program, creating services like credit and savings for the poor.

Monday Linkblogging: Women Entrepreneurs

• The Gulf Daily News has an interview with Huda Janahi, the first Bahraini woman to receive the GCC Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award.

Getting a commercial registration (CR) was the biggest obstacle as I was told at the Labour Ministry that only males were allowed a CR for cargo businesses. However, there was a misunderstanding. When I joined the United Nations Development Organisation (Unido) for its Arab Regional Centre for Entrepreneurship and Investment Training (Arceit), I told them my problem and they said there was no law that stated that women cannot get CRs for cargo businesses. They advised me to go to the ministry after they contacted officials there and soon I was granted a CR.

• An article in the Maryland Gazette.net features Jennifer D. Collins, recently honored by Enterprising Women magazine.

Jennifer D. Collins had been steadily growing the event-planning company she started in 1997 until the hospitality industry was hit hard by the 2001 terror attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. People stopped traveling to hold meetings, so she had to tap into her communications expertise to also provide clients with meeting strategies to keep her business afloat, she said.

• Entrepreneur.com has an article about women getting MBAs not to work at corporations, but to run their own businesses.

To be sure, getting your MBA isn't a prerequisite for becoming a successful entrepreneur. But one thing is for certain, at least according to our sources at some of the nation's top-ranked MBA programs: Whether you're looking for a program with the best professors, the best classroom experience or the greatest opportunity for women, business schools are the place to be--especially if you are interested in innovation, entrepreneurship and real-life case studies.

• Business Opportunist blog posts about niche marketing for home-based businesses:

You don’t have access to viable means and amenities to compete directly with large business houses and serve a broad spectrum of consumers. In such an adverse business scenario, niche marketing emerges as the most feasible and cost effective strategy that can help home business owners to stay ahead of their competitors and maximize their profits.

To Our Credit Microfinance Documentary

Here's a clip from a Rooy Media produced PBS documentary about microcredit in the US.

Rooy Media LLC has created over fifty programs that educate people about important social issues. This video clip is a sample from To Our Credit: Bootstrap Banking in America, a PBS documentary that profiles microenterprise development, an important new self-help strategy that shows significant promise in the fight to combat poverty in America. The

Rooy Media website has a whole microfinance section so check it out.

Women With Mojo

Just for fun, here's a series from Watchmojo.com (a web video magazine) on the top 50 women with mojo, as determined by the show's viewers.

You can see the individual clips for each woman here. The list is pretty celebrity-heavy.

What do you think? Who are your top women with mojo?