Forum discusses how to promote microbusiness, fight poverty

from The Douglas Dispatch

By Jonathan Clark/Wick News Service

DOUGLAS - More than 100 people from around the Arizona-Sonora border region turned out Friday for a Cochise College-sponsored forum on alternative economic development.

The idea behind the event, organizers said, was to share ideas and encourage cooperation among individuals and groups working to reduce poverty by promoting microbusiness. "The people who are working to combat poverty are often small, all-volunteer groups that many times are working side-by-side but don't know about each other," said Rebecca Orozco, director of the college's Center for Southwest Studies.

"They need to be able to share resources to move forward. And so what we wanted to do was to create a forum where all of those small groups could come together and help each other out."

Gary Spivey and Jose Ramirez, board members at the grassroots organization DouglaPrieta Works, told attendees about their group's efforts to promote economic self-sufficiency in one neighborhood in Agua Prieta, Sonora.

At its community center in the Colonia Ladrillera neighborhood, DouglaPrieta Works operates woodworking and sewing workshops and supports a commercial kitchen.

The idea, Ramirez said, is to give low-income people skills and job opportunities, not handouts.

"We Mexicans believe that we have great capabilities," Ramirez said. "What we don't have is economic resources."

"And so if you all are interested in sending help to Mexico," he said, "ask us what it is we need, don't tell us, 'this is what we think you need.' "

On the other side of the border, the PPEP Economic Resource Center, formerly known as the Douglas Business Incubator, is stepping up its efforts to promote small business and economic growth in Douglas, director Ana Varela said.

In addition to classes and training, Varela told the audience, the resource center also provides office space, telecommunications services and loans to people who want to start their own micro-businesses.

With overhead costs like rent and phone installation taken care of, Varela said, people who have skills but who lack resources can still become self-employed.

"We're talking about taking something you already know how to do and making money from it," Varela said.

Tommy Bassett of the Just Trade Center in Douglas described how fair trade practices can fight poverty in Mexico and stem the flow of illegal immigration to the United States.

As an example, Bassett talked about Just Coffee, an Agua Prieta-based roaster and exporter that buys coffee beans directly from a farmer's cooperative in the town of Salvador Urbina in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas.

But cutting out middlemen, Just Coffee is able to pay the farmers a fair price for their product. As a result, Bassett said, Salvador Urbina now has new telephone lines, a water-purification facility and a boom in new housing.

With the town on better economic footing, its young people don't have to leave to find work in the U.S., Bassett said.

"The problem isn't borders and it isn't the great big employment need in the U.S.," he said. "What's generating migration is poverty."