Women Inmates Train to Start Businesses After Prison

July 24th, 2011 at 07:44am Under Education report

This is the VOA Special English Education Report.Getting a job can be especially difficult for someone with a prison record. So a prison training program in the American Northwest prepares women to start their own businesses.

(SOUND)

The program is called Lifelong Information for Entrepreneurs, or LIFE. The training combines business and social skills. The women learn how to manage their time, set goals and settle conflicts peacefully.

Saresa Whitley is serving five years for assault at the Coffee Creek Correctional Facility, a women’s prison in Oregon. She has a job waiting for her when she is released in January. But she also plans to start a small business with the knowledge gained from the months of class.

SARESA WHITLEY: “When I was talking about knowing if my business is viable or not, through a profit-and-loss model, I was like ‘Wow, I didn’t even know the word viable before, and now I do.’ I’ve learned a lot, I’ve learned a lot about how to write a business plan, about effective communications skills, how to listen, something I didn’t know how to do before.”

Cynthia Thompson is serving time for stealing someone’s identity. She says the lessons learned in the program are important not just for the inmates, but also the communities they will re-enter.

CYNTHIA THOMPSON: “I think the goal of it is to produce people that are being part of the community, paying their taxes and being volunteers. Not just necessarily successful small businesses, but just successful, accountable people in the community.”

MercyCorps Northwest started the training program four years ago. MercyCorps is an international development organization. Doug Cooper is assistant director of MercyCorps Northwest.

DOUG COOPER: “We were looking for ways that we could apply our expertise around economic development and small business management to populations that could use it. It’s identical to what we do internationally, except we apply it here in Oregon and Washington.”

MercyCorps Northwest has just started a LIFE program at a women’s prison in Washington state. Doug Cooper says he hopes the idea will spread to prisons throughout the country.

The group says just three of the one hundred graduates of its training program have returned to prison. Graduates of the LIFE program have started businesses like cutting hair and selling goods at farmers markets.

One woman who served time for theft now runs an automobile repair business. Lori does not want her last name used. She says she worries what people might think if they knew she had been in prison. Lori stayed in contact with a MercyCorps mentor after she left prison. Together they found answers to questions about running a small business.

LORI: “What works, what doesn’t? And is it worth having a website of your own, and what avenues of advertising can you exploit for free? Those are the type of things that I found invaluable.”

And that’s the VOA Special English Education Report. I’m Christopher Cruise.

____________________________________________________________________________

his is the VOA Special English Education Report.

Ballou High School in Washington might not seem the mostly likely school to have a lacrosse team.

(SOUND)

But lacrosse has grown beyond the popular image of a sport mainly for wealthy private schools. Ballou is a public school in one of the poorest neighborhoods in the city. In the past six years, more than forty students have died violent deaths. Many were the result of drug violence.

(SOUND)

Ballou has just had its first year with a lacrosse team. The team is for girls. They lost every game. But their coach, Holly McGarvie, says this was also the first time they ever played.

HOLLY McGARVIE: “You know, I think the goal each year is going to change. This year, I think, just starting and building a foundation that we can build from and create a tradition of women’s lacrosse here at Ballou.”

Lacrosse is a fast-moving sport, the modern version of a game played by American Indians. Teams try to make goals with a ball caught and thrown using a net at the end of a stick.

School officials decided to make changes at Ballou after less than sixty percent of the senior class graduated in two thousand six. Since then the graduation rate has improved by ten to fifteen percent. Rahman Branch, the school principal, says one change was to increase activities after the school day.

RAHMAN BRANCH: “We decided to take some more approaches to add on to them being comfortable being a kid, to now making sure they are a kid who knows what they want, what it takes to get there, and then has the stamina to go through.”

Mr. Branch says Holly McGarvie was a perfect match for Ballou. She was on a national team and a star player at Princeton University. She was in her first year of teaching. She wanted to take the lessons she learned from sports and use them in teaching biology.

Coach McGarvie says the first practices for the new team were difficult. Some players got angry at one another. She helped them learn to keep their mind on the game.

HOLLY McGARVIE: “On our way home from our first game, from Wilson, and we are all talking about it, and the girls are extremely excited. Despite the loss of, I think, maybe eleven to one, you know, they were already in the mindset of what can we do better?”

Tylashia Joyner says lacrosse has helped her think more about her future.

TYLASHIA JOYNER: “I will want to play in college because it will keep me in shape and it will help me stay focused and want to do something. Because if you want to play a sport, you have to have your grades up.”

And that’s the VOA Special English Education Report. You can watch a video report about the lacrosse team at voaspecialenglish.com. You can also write to us on Facebook and Twitter at VOA Learning English. I’m Christopher Cruise.