Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, December 27, 1994 TAG: 9412270039
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: A-8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CLAUDINE WILLIAMS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Meet the members of Total Action Against Poverty's Entrepreneurial Class.
There are Joyce Boulware and Evelyn Kowalsky, who want to help needy people find bargains. The two 37-year old women are enrolled in a 14-week class sponsored by Total Action Against Poverty that teaches low- to middle-income people how to start and run their own businesses.
New to the Roanoke area, the course is like a miniature college class, with a volunteer faculty. Students learn how to market their ideas, build networks of customers and write budgets and business plans.
The students are adults who have at least a ninth-grade education, a business idea and the skills to start their own business, said Annette Lewis, director of TAP employment training services.
Kowalsky said she joined the class to learn how to earn a living for herself while helping others. Her plan is to open a consignment store and donate a percentage of the proceeds to shelters for abused women.
She can easily identify with women who have escaped abusive marriages and ended up homeless or in nondescript shelters. A few years ago, she was one of them.
After what she described as suffering 10 years of abuse from her husband, Kowalsky last year packed her pots, pans, bags of clothes for herself and her two children and fled to a shelter in Covington.
She still is learning to live without a husband. She uses food stamps for grocery shopping; drives a rebuilt, donated car; and buys her dresses from the Salvation Army and other thrift stores. Her rent-subsidized apartment is packed with old furniture and clothes she has begun collecting to open her shop.
"I thought about women who had been through a hard time and left marriages with only the shirts off their backs," Kowalsky said. "And with the economy being so bad and getting worse, it will help if people could get nice things at a reasonable price."
Kowalsky hopes her shop will become a ministry for battered women. She would like to help women both financially and emotionally by listening to them.
Although she may not be one of the first graduates next month, she will work one on one with TAP advisers so she can open a store by midsummer.
The course will not guarantee a successful business, but it will give students the tools to help them begin, said James Lang, an academic coordinator for the program.
Boulware is accustomed to the classroom. She learned how to drive a semi truck in six weeks. She said her determination in that course - with 10-hour classes six days a week - gave her the foundation to aspire to start her own business.
"I always wanted to go into business," Boulware said. "I did my best in everything I did. I gave it 110 percent and people just did not give me any appreciation."
Boulware floated from job to job because she couldn't find a trade that kept her attention.
"I am not a flake," she said. "I just get bored easily. Once I learned a job and there was not anything else to learn, I got bored."
Although Boulware loved the freedom of driving across the country, she wanted to spend more time with her children. That's why she brainstormed ideas for her own business-to-be: publishing a magazine for bargain hunters.
Boulware based her idea on her own experience of shopping in flea markets and yard sales. She would jump from location to location looking for a specific item at a low cost.
She decided it would be simpler if a magazine pinpointed places for other bargain hunters to shop.
She wants to publish one listing all of the yard and garage sales in town, where people who want to sell specific items could advertise free. And buyers who subscribe to the magazine would know exactly where to go to get the best bargains.
Boulware plans to begin advertising for her business in April.
After completing the program, some of the students will qualify for loans administered by the Southwest Virginia Community Development fund. So far, $20,000 has been allocated for the program. Qualifying students will receive an average of $2,000 to start their businesses.
To qualify for loans, students must have a workable idea, prove they have the skills to run their businesses and have the ability to make their idea work.
Seventeen people enrolled in the program in September; three dropped out and one student - Dolores Barlow - died Dec. 1 from unexplained causes. The former naval officer had one of the more promising business plans, said Lewis, the program director.
Barlow, 23, had almost competed her business plan outlining a day-care center that would operate days and evenings. She hoped it would help mothers who have to work in the evenings.
Seven of the program's students are scheduled to graduate. Some of the others will not complete a business plan or earn a business license in time for graduation but will continue to work one-on-one with TAP advisers.
In February, TAP will begin a new class. Like the initial group of students, they'll share the hope to make a better life for themselves and their families.
by CNB