Lila Ohtah Ehanni...

A long time ago.... when I was younger, I helped many people establish micro-businesses on the premise that it is better to teach a person or family to feed themselves via a micro-business than it is to orient them to 'a job'. This is Traditional Lakota behavior - we believe that if you have an ability, you have a responsibility to help others help themselves. The specific Teaching is, "if you know of a problem and have the ability / knowledge to relieve that problem and you don't do whatever you can to relieve it, then you automatically shoulder a burden equal to the original one, thus doubling the load". Now I'm a grandmother, and I'm establishing a business again, but this time, it's much harder. Times HAVE changed. Laws have changed. Attitudes have changed - for the most part, they are less helpful now. There are more people facing disaster now than there were 30 years ago. Duwahleh! Have I walked the earth that long?? Guess so.. What I hope to do with this Group is get people involved in helping others establish their own businesses - principally, micro-businesses. "Real" ones, not hype, pyramid schemes, franchises, etc. Perhaps people with more money than they need to survive will get involved in making micro-loans to we who have no credit scores, little collateral, but great references and work ethic. Seems to me that we who pay cash for everything or who lay things away and pay on them until we can pick them up, who fund from within, who work and live on the fringes of The System - should get a pat on the back, not a kick in the duff, for our ways. I was an SBA SCORE team member for a short time. My specialty was Women and Minority Business Development. I quit because of the anti-productive, bigoted attitudes in the existing program. It is my hope and prayer that this approach will be more productive. Those who join will tell me, I'm sure.