Models for Self-Sufficiency

Youth Business Opportunities and Small Loans to Minority Businesses.

We have to be looking at economic models for gainful employment of youth of color and people of color generally. If Halle Barrie's character in "Bullworth" was right, as I believe she was, that it was the jobs in the black community after the second world war that provided the stimulus for the civil rights movement and the black power movement after that, then we must focus energies on building, or re-building the economic base of the black community.

The simple idea that black business should be providing services and products to the black communities is not the way it is right now. Would micro-credit be a solution to this? Maybe but it also has it's problems as an economic model.

But the Toxic Soil Busters are an interesting example of a youth-run business that is cleaning up the town of Worchester-literally. By educating citiznery on the problem of lead in the soil and remediating the soil, these youth are making a viable business that could be patterned after in other cities.