Creating Business Opportunities in Oakland

Women's Initiative Graduate Teena Johnson inside Cater to You, in Downtown Oakland.

Helping ordinary people build new businesses is critical to our economic recovery, and one of the many goals of United Way’s Road to Recovery Campaign.

At United Way’s SparkPoint Oakland Center, we are doing exactly that - working with low-income individuals and their families to address financial-stability issues and helping them pursue dreams of owning their own businesses.

SparkPoint Oakland Center brings together a number of nonprofit organizations that each contribute to its success.  One of these partners, The Women’s Initiative for Self Employment has been “assisting high-potential, low-income women who dream of business ownership” since 1988. Gruaduates of their intensive 20-session program have started and expanded over 1,600 businesses from photography studios to catering companies and mechanic shops.

We recently had a chance to meet one of their graduates, Teena Johnson at Catered To You, the business she owns and operates in downtown Oakland.  She is a perfect example of the kind of success Women’s Initiative has been able to achieve. With their help she was able to go from frustrated and under-employed to a business owner who last year, organized a food drive that handed out 148 meals to some of the homeless people around her downtown Oakland store.

Thanks to partners like Women’s Initiative, SparkPoint Oakland is well on its way towards helping move people along the path towards economic self-sufficiency.

Read Teena’s entire story here