Low-income immigrants get a hand

This group is helping immigrants start their own businesses. Immigrants are almost always very entrepreneurial, they have the ideas and need some help with the laws, bookkeeping, etc.   - - Donna Poisl

by Carolyn Said

Rebekah Lwanga Peterkin always loved color, fashion and design.

When she moved to the Bay Area in 2007 after a career in merchandising, the Uganda native wanted to launch her own business creating clothing but wasn't sure how to get going.

Then she encountered AnewAmerica Community Corp., a Berkeley nonprofit that trains immigrants to start and run their own businesses.

"AnewAmerica gave me the perspective to look at myself as a designer," she said. "All those years, I was always designing on the side. But I didn't know about business. I started their class and began to learn about it."
Click on the HEADLINE above to read the rest of this story! This is only a small part of it.