Women's Opportunities Resource Center (WORC)
Lynn Cutler, President
1930 Chestnut St., Suite 1600
Philadelphia, Pa. 19103
(215) 564-5500
(215) 564-0933

Fourteen women surround a long conference table piled high with papers and books in a large, peach-colored room. Mostly young, a few older, they’re all “dressed for success” in tasteful business attire, and they’re all filled with obvious enthusiasm. The topic of the day is “developing marketing strategies” for a small business or product, and the women are seriously involved, batting ideas around as they consider everything from the age, sex, race and income to the personal characteristics of the target market for the case in point, a natural bread called “Zuliakha Banana Honey Loaf.” Around the walls of the room, large tear sheets contain goals and objectives for other small businesses: “Total Wellness,” “Rogell’s Hair Salon,” “Bonnie’s Fashions,” “More Than A Book Store,” and more.

This is MBA-level stuff, and the group’s discussion is intelligent and probing, focusing, for example, on the relative merits of promoting the bread product as “organic” or “healthy.”

These women aren’t college students, though, but low-income individuals, many of whom have been on welfare and virtually all of whom have known the hard knocks of being laid off, let go and downsized. Now they’re gaining the tools they’ll need to become their own bosses as small-business owners, working through a startlingly hopeful program called WORC, the Women’s Opportunities Resource Center.

Founded by Lynne Cutler, its current president, WORC evolved gradually out of a holistic residential program for women and children that she started back in 1976. Initially offering counseling, day-care and employment services, she began seeing a serious need for career-oriented programs aimed at improving the job skills and employability of women without a high-school education. Working from models in Britain and France and later adding on a small-loan model from India, WORC finally spun off as an independent program in 1993.

Operating from a neat if spartan office suite in a downtown building, WORC offers three times each year a 12-week Self-Employment Training program (SET). It is aimed at women who qualify as low-income, underemployed or dislocated, typically earning less than $20,000 -- often much less. To qualify, applicants must present a specific idea for a business that can realistically be gotten off the ground for $10,000 or less, and show some related experience or skill, which may range from previous employment to home or volunteer experience. Using what Cutler calls “stepping,” taking the training one easy step at a time, the program begins with a three-week first phase, meeting three times a week for five hours, where women evaluate the feasibility of their business idea, their personal readiness to pursue it, and build a supportive community among themselves.

At the end of this first phase, women who feel ready to move ahead (with the concurrence of staff) proceed to Phase II, a course of 22 sessions, usually meeting two or three times a week, in which they write and test a formal business plan. During the course, participants also form a “savings group,” setting up an account to which every member contributes $10 per week, managed mutually and from which members may borrow. Participants, who also receive individualized counseling during the course, are linked with mentors in their field of interest, and receive ongoing management assistance after graduation -- monthly at first, then quarterly -- as they actually set up their businesses. Previous graduates also form a Self-Employment Network (SEN) that provides further assistance and mentoring to new participants and recent graduates.

The state Department of Public Welfare also helps through special allowances to help with business startup expenses, and waivers to allow welfare recipients to continue to obtain assistance as a “bridge” while their businesses are growing.

Finally, and perhaps most important, WORC operates a substantial business-loan program, under the supervision of staffer Joe Cantrell, to help participants finance the businesses that they plan. The organization has arranged a partnership with five of the city’s largest banks, which have agreed to depart from tradition to make small loans (as little as $1,000) to help graduates begin their businesses; to reassure the banks about making loans that they might normally consider “shaky,” WORC uses a funds pool to guarantee 30 percent of qualifying loans. More substantial businesses get counseling and help toward Small Business Administration loans up to $250,000.

In a separate and highly innovative new program also under WORC’s umbrella, it has recently worked with state government to create a “Family Savings Account Initiative,” partly funded by the state, to encourage low-income families to achieve self-sufficiency by savings and asset accumulation. An outgrowth of the successful $10-per-week savings requirement in WORC’s self-employment training, Family Savings Account participants agree to put aside a minimum of $10 every week in a restricted savings account for two years and may save up to a maximum of $2,000 per year. As a further incentive, the state provides a 50% match. Participants must agree to save toward a specific, limited goal, which may be a home purchase or repair, financing a small business, financing higher education for the participant or children, or retirement.

Starting a small business isn’t easy, and the women understand this. But there’s surprising confidence as they talk around the room, sharing stories of being laid off repeatedly and almost losing hope, a hope that they’ve regained through the dream of being their own boss. At the front of the classroom, a neatly hand-lettered sign inspires them with the words of Theodore Roosevelt:

“Far better is it to try glorious things,
even though checkered with failures,
than to be ranked with those poor souls
who neither enjoy much, nor suffer much.
For they live in that gray twilight
that knows not victory or defeat.”

And this remarkable program accomplishes all this with a staff of 10 and a lean budget of $465,000.

All the feature stories on @GRASS-ROOTS.ORG's pages are reported and written by Robin Garr, a prize-winning journalist who has visited more than 500 innovative grassroots programs in all 50 states since 1990.

Browse his book, Reinvesting In America, at Amazon.com.

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