Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Maine Centers for Women, Work and Community: Starting Where Women Are
Wendy Rose, Gilda Nardone and the Maine Centers for Women, Work and Community: Starting Where Women Are
Part of “Making Change Happen: Women Creating a Better Maine”
Written by Kelsey Abbott
“It’s never too late to change your life and turn things around for yourself, your community and your family,” says Wendy Rose, the senior micro-enterprise coordinator at the Maine Centers for Women, Work and Community (WWC). She should know. Rose and the rest of the staff at WWC have helped women in many different stages of life learn how to manage their finances, gain leadership skills, and the right careers and build their own businesses.
“We start where women are,” says Gilda Nardone, the executive director of WWC. “We help them figure out where they want to go and how they will get there.” WWC’s coaching and assistance in financial education, entrepreneurship, career planning and leadership give their clients the tools to make major changes in their lives. One woman started in her late 50s and made a very successful career change. Another started on public assistance and earned her way off it by completing the New
Ventures™ program, a twelve week course that helped her create her own business. Stories like these, say Rose and Nardone, illustrate how WWC has helped more than 27,000 Maine women succeed.
WWC does not measure its success strictly by the number of participants that go on to start a business (about half of New Ventures™ participants), nor by the number that maintain their business in the long term (about one-third of New Ventures™ participants). By their definition, successful participants are those who have a business idea, a business plan and a cash flow projection–and who have done the work to investigate whether the business is feasible, viable and desirable. Even if the answer is “no,” these participants come away with the tools to make good decisions.
These tools are essential to all business owners, including those in the creative economy who might not have the training in marketing strategies, cash flow and other aspects of a sustainable business.
With support from the Maine Women’s Fund, WWC’s Kennebec Corridor Creative Enterprise Project specifically addresses the need for business training for creative entrepreneurs. Through this program, WWC offers a series of workshops to provide artists and artisans with business skills. In addition, the Kennebec Corridor Creative Enterprise Project awards small grants to networks of artists. One grant was used to create brochures for Artery: Visual Arts Along the Kennebec, a collaboration of galleries and artists in the Augusta-Richmond area. Another grant went to River Roads Gallery, a Skowhegan gallery that represents rural artists, and a third was awarded to Five Rivers Arts Alliance in the Midcoast region. The most recent grant supports a group of potters who hope to boost their visibility and holiday sales by renting retail space in Hallowell.
The Creative Enterprise Project demonstrates how far WWC has grown from its roots. When Nardone was hired as the organization’s first employee in the late 1970s, it was known as the Maine Displaced
Homemakers Program. The program catered to women who had never been in the workforce by offering career planning assistance and encouraging women to go back to school. As women’s personal and professional options have evolved, so have WWC’s programs. They still provide guidance for job seekers, but the organization has expanded to include 27 staff members at
18 sites statewide, offering one-on-one coaching as well as a wide variety of classes such as “Financing Your Future,” “Introduction to Self-Employment,” “The Basics of Starting a Business” and “Finding Your Voice, Using Your Power.” With the addition of mini-grant programs like the Creative Enterprise Project, Rose and Nardone hope to encourage more women to create community collaborations throughout Maine. Despite all the changes, the mission of WWC remains the same: to help women succeed in the Maine economy. Ultimately, Rose hopes that the women that WWC helps locally will contribute to a global shift. She dreams of a world “where women participate fully in the economy, receive equal pay for equal work and play a major role in decision-making bodies.” She sees a special value in helping women get their footing because women generally reinvest their time, money and energy in their communities. “When a society ignores women,” she says, “it becomes impoverished. Women enrich society.”
How are you enriching society? Tell us!
