Women in Business graduates celebrate

MUSKOKA - She signed up for the program to get her business going. Instead, she discovered the business was her friends’ dream for her, not her own.
Yvonne Gravel is one of the Gravenhurst graduates from the Women in Business program. She was at the graduation at Club One in Bracebridge on Wednesday night, April 4.
The program targets women who are at a transitional point in their lives. It is an eight-month program that helps women build a support network and find direction. By the end of the program, women have outlined either a business plan or a life plan.
Gravel home-schooled her two children, who are now teens, so she’s looking for something more to do with her time. She said she still doesn’t know what she wants to do, but knows she doesn’t want her own business.
“The original business plan was all dreamt up by friends and handed to me and said, here you should do this,” she said. “I said, ‘oh, OK.’”
She said she was surprised throughout the program as people told her what she was good at.
“I think because I was a stay-at-home mom, a little bit sheltered,” she said.
She found she has some skills she didn’t know she had, such as organization, administration and public speaking.
“I realize it’s only me that’s holding me back, me and my self-doubts. If I actually try, I’m actually quite good at it.”
The 19 graduates included women from Gravenhurst, Bracebridge and Huntsville, ranging in age from their late teens to those who are grandmothers.
Judy Precoor, one of the graduates who lives in Port Carling and attended the Bracebridge class, decided to take the program to see if her business idea of dying bags and T-shirts with clay from her backyard could be successful.
She wasn’t sure what to expect of the program.
“It was kind of a girly thing, and I’m not a girly type of person,” she said. “I went in with an open mind, and it worked out pretty good, I think.”
Her business idea is taking off, too.
“Everybody’s falling in love with the T-shirts and the dirt bags and they think it’s hilarious,” she said.
The program brought more than just dirt bags to fruition; it brought deep friendships. The eight women in her class who graduated together are already talking about getting together and camping out in her backyard this fall, she said.
The program has been running for 12 years. It starts each year in mid-October and ends in mid-March to facilitate the seasonal economy in Muskoka.
Linda Hutt, employment program co-ordinator for the YWCA, facilitates the program in Huntsville.
“It was created in Muskoka for women in Muskoka,” said Hutt.
It doesn’t have to be a business interest that brings someone to the program, said Hutt. The purpose is to create positive change in their lives. Only about 50 per cent of the women who take the program start their own business, she said.
Next year the program facilitators are looking at expanding the program to other more far-flung areas.
They’re looking at spreading out to areas away from Highway 11, said Hutt, possibly Lake of Bays, Muskoka Lakes or the Township of Georgian Bay.
Graduates this year have a new opportunity through the Microloan Program. The program offers a $1,000 loan to graduates who need help starting their own business.
Gravel echoed one of the most frequent comments heard throughout the evening about the Women in Business program: it gave her confidence.
“I feel OK now saying to friends, thanks very much. I’m glad you have that level of confidence in me, but that’s not what I want to do,” she said.

Small - Large
|
Print
|
Email
|
|