(CBS 5) Connie Rivera and Paulette Meyer are meeting for the very first time, but the Mexican arts and crafts store Connie has owned for two years is here because of an idea Paulette had eighteen years ago.
Paulette explains, "Really the impetus for it came because I was working at Levi Strauss Foundation and I was looking at interesting economic development models around the country that might be applicable in some of the communities where they were closing their factories, and where there were a lot of low income women who would be without work and who needed economic options."
So Paulette gathered a group of others to help her brainstorm. Soon they gave birth to the Women's Initiative for Self-Employment or "WISE", an organization that helps low-income women launch themselves into self-sufficiency by owning their own businesses. WISE started out with just two $15,000 grants. That was enough to help start thousands of businesses.
"At least two, three thousand over time, and as many as fifteen thousand women have been trained to know how to start a business," Paulette adds.
When WISE helps a woman like Connie start a business like this, they're not just helping the woman herself, but her family and the entire community. For every one dollar WISE invests, another twenty-three comes back within eighteen months.
"All that I have now is through them, because I didn't know before where to start," says Connie. "Financially, I feel more established. After two years, I am so happy, I am expanding to a second store in Oakland."
Paulette has made changes, too, leaving WISE in 2003, but taking her leadership skills to many other non-profits that also work to empower women. And she's Board Chair of Equal Rights Advocates. In all these years, working with an array of organizations, she has remained what she calls a "professional volunteer."
"After fifteen years, I thought that the organization deserved new leadership," she laughs. "I'm the incoming Chair of the Board of the Women Donor's Network, I'm a trustee of the Center for Community Change in Washington, DC. There's a compensation for doing this kind of work that goes beyond what you earn. It's very inspiring and it's very gratifying to be involved in work where you see other people developing and getting what they need."
For helping so many women get the financial and professional development they need and for generously volunteering for more than twenty years, this week's Jefferson Award in the Bay Area goes to Paulette Meyer of San Francisco.
By Barbara Rodgers
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