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OAKLAND — Dilsa Lugo learned how to cook masterfully in her Mexican hometown of Cuernavaca, but starting her own Bay Area food business was another kind of challenge.
She knew little English and had a young child to raise. In her spare time, she steamed 200 tamales a week in her West Berkeley home, selling most of them to her husband's co-workers in construction.
If she stopped there, Lugo would be another of countless immigrants finding small ways to patch up household incomes in an informal economy. But Lugo took her business dreams a step further, enrolling in English and entrepreneurial classes, discovering a licensed community kitchen and, this week, obtaining a small cash grant to help grow her budding catering business.
"I did a lot of research about who was going to be my target customer," Lugo said. "The thing is, I don't have transportation. So, all the food I make, I can only make for 40 or 50 people because I don't have a truck or something bigger."
Lugo was one of six women awarded $2,000 grants Wednesday from CEO Women, an Oakland-based organization that helps low-income immigrant and refugee women launch or grow small businesses.
She plans to use it toward the purchase of a catering truck. Lugo, who buys many of her vegetables and spices from a Hollister farm, hopes eventually to set up shop selling food at a local farmers market.
But for now, Lugo has to transport her cooked Mexican foods from the
Other recipients of the grant, which was launched last year, have used it for everything from Web site development to paying the first month of storefront rent.
"To me, it's like a million dollars," said Vivian Oruruo, an Oakland resident from Nigeria who is launching a mobile notary and printing business. "I have been thinking of buying a copy machine."
In recent years, microfinance programs have been touted internationally as a way of reducing global poverty, especially since the Bangladesh-based community development bank that helped pioneer the small loan movement won a Nobel Peace Prize in 2006.
Very small loans, or microcredit, are offered to people whose lack of capital or credit makes it impossible for them to qualify for most traditional financial programs. Along with loans, some organizations have offered startup grants, which don't have to be paid back, to help poor entrepreneurs in the developing world build assets.
But stateside versions of such programs are still a rarity.
Farhana Huq, founder of CEO Women, said her donor-funded group is one of just a few organizations offering tiny startup grants to low-income entrepreneurs in the United States. Other organizations help pair entrepreneurs with private or public lenders, but some of the loan requirements can still be prohibitive.
"People say, well, $1,000 is not a whole lot of money," said Huq, who frequently shares with her clients that her own organization began with just $1,000 from a Silicon Valley philanthropist who liked her ideas. "But if you're an entrepreneur, you're going to figure out how to do it."
CEO Women's chief service is in training aspiring entrepreneurs in business, marketing and networking skills while also teaching them English. The latest crop of women graduated from that 16-week program in June.
Beginning last year, Huq's organization began providing small grants to some of the women who excelled in their classes but still needed seed money to make their business plan a reality. Along with the cash, the women get a business coach and expert help rebranding their idea with a new logo.
"They're just so grateful, and they feel accountable to us," Huq said.
One recent grant recipient, Josefina Reyes of Union City, said she will use her $2,000 to create business cards and other marketing material for her business, which arranges decor for local weddings and quincineras.
Another, Oakland resident and Ethiopian immigrant Winou Wakeyo, said she will use it for wire, beads, chairs and other equipment she needs for her flea market jewelry business.
Catering is a popular choice. In addition to Lugo's organic Mexican food business, called Los Cilantros, CEO Women granted money Wednesday to Hayward resident Rosario Cabrera, who is launching a business specializing in food from her native Peru, and Oakland resident Mieko Raymer, a Japanese immigrant who is using the money for sophisticated brochures to advertise a business catering dinner parties with Asian-fusion cuisine.
Reach Matt O'Brien at 925-977-8463 or mattobrien@bayareanewsgroup.com.
