The last job Ida James had was seven months ago. The caseworker from Public Aid had sent her to shelve books in the library at Triton Junior College. For a while, James, a west-side resident, hoped the job would get her off welfare.
Pat Wright, the economic-development planner with the University of Illinois at Chicago’s Center for Urban Economic Development, helped the group get started. She says “It will be tough. They have no start-up capital, and they want to be entrepreneurs. The whole notion of entrepreneurship is self-exploitation. You have to sacrifice now to gain later. It’s a long haul, and I hope they make it.”
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The venture was the idea of Cynthia Williams and Deborah Gilliam, staff workers for the Austin People’s Action Center, a west-side community and social-service organization. Among the other programs APAC sponsors are a young moms’ counseling service and a shelter for homeless mothers and their children. The more Williams and Gilliam talked to the women who passed through their doors, the more they heard the same lament: few skills, no access, and lousy luck.
Born and raised in Mississippi, Hattie Wormley and her husband moved to Chicago in 1957. “I’m country,” she says. “I can milk a cow, plant a garden, make butter–you name it. I came to Chicago because I followed my husband here. He was looking for work, and he wound up at the Pepsi-Cola factory over on 51st Street. My first job here was in a textile factory on 40th Street–we were living on the south side then. After that I worked in an upholstery factory.
“What we wanted to do was take the women–step by step–in developing a business,” says Wright. “What is your market? Who are your competitors? How many hours will you have to work to meet your goals–that kind of thing.”
To clean a home or apartment, they charge an hourly rate of $10, and a minimum charge of $30. For businesses and real estate companies, they charge $50 an hour. They hope to collect an hourly wage of $6 apiece.
“Their profit goes down because their expenses are up,” says Wright. “They’ll have a manager, an office. They hope to be paying their own medical benefits. In a perfect world, they won’t need as much profit.”
