Title:
Women Inmates Train to Start Businesses After Prison
Description: This is
a VOA Special English Education Report.
See text below
Text:
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. 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. She says she has learned a lot about how
to write a business plan, how to communicate
effectively, and how to listen.Another inmate,
Cynthia Thompson, is serving time for stealing
someone's identity. She says preparing inmates to
become "successful, accountable people" will be good
for the communities they re-enter. MercyCorps
Northwest started the training program four years
ago. MercyCorps is an international development
organization. Doug Cooper is assistant director of
MercyCorps Northwest. He says, "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." MercyCorps Northwest
has just started a LIFE program at a women's prison
in neighboring 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 handmade crafts 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. She
stayed in contact with a MercyCorps mentor after she
left prison. Together they found answers to
questions about running a small business. For VOA
Special English, I'm Alex Villarreal. You can
download MP3s of our programs and find English
teaching activities at voaspecialenglish.com.
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Hi. I
personally reviewed this video and found it appropriate for
the news section of English Global Group. This
is a Voice of America video which covers an interesting
topic in Special English. I would appreciate some feedback from both
students and teachers about this video. You can comment in
the window below using any of a number of different services
including Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, and Hotmail.
