Santa Maria Celebrates Small Business Success

Women’s Economic Ventures is proud to celebrate the accomplishments of 14 women and men who have completed the Santa Maria-based Advanced Spanish Self-Employment Training (SSET) course.

WEV’s Self-Employment Training program is designed to help women and men start, stabilize and grow small businesses.

After months of training on topics including finances, marketing and sales, public relations and advertising, legal and insurance issues, record keeping, and how to write a business plan, graduates leave the course with the necessary tools and support needed to run their business.

Some businesses and business concepts include an innovator, a contracting business and ice cream shop.

“We are inspired by the accomplishments of our newest Spanish Self-Employment Training graduates and welcome them to the WEV family,” says Guillermo Chavez, WEV Spanish Program Coordinator, “through this program, each graduate now has the expanded knowledge and resources to take their businesses to the next level.”

Graduates range from first-time business owners to those who have turned to WEV to help expand their existing businesses.

“We are the only people that actually provide this kind of training in our area in Spanish as well as English”, says Women’s Economic Ventures founder and CEO Marsha Bailey about the local, non-profit organization, “we teach them how to really assess the feasibility of their business idea, write a business plan, and then once that’s done, then if they need money, then we can provide a loan for starting up or expanding the business.

Women, men and families have gone through the WEV program.

“You know a lot of our clients haven’t gone to college and maybe haven’t even finished high school and so it’s a big deal for them”, Marsha Bailey says, “I should say that it’s a very rigorous 14 weeks, they have to work really hard, its not only three hours a week and two all-day Saturdays but they also do on average our clients tell us they do about ten hours a week of homework put together with their business plans so it’s a lot of work, it takes a lot of commitment.”

Bailey says Women’s Economic Ventures was founded on a fundamental economic principal.

“Most new job growth comes from new small businesses, start-ups, so businesses don’t start big, businesses start small, so you have to start that pipeline somewhere so”, Bailey says, “an important part of what we do is poverty alleviation and so we want to help people create businesses that will help them create assets, a business that has some value that hopefully they can pass on to the next generation and help lift them out of poverty.”

For more information on Women’s Economic Ventures go to www.wevonline.org.