An Aunt’s Plight Inspires a Quest to Aid Immigrant Women

My journey to starting a nonprofit organization, Creating Economic Opportunities for Women, began with the heartache and compassion I felt for a favorite aunt.

During my childhood years, she was like a second mom to me. In the early 1980s, she emigrated from Pakistan, and

FARHANA HUQ Age: 29 First professional job: Program manager, Microenterprise for Women, Oakland, Calif. Current job: Chief executive officer, Creating Economi Opportunities for Women, Oakland

lived with my family in New Jersey for about five years. Then one day, relatives in Pakistan announced they had arranged a marriage between my aunt and a man living in England. Soon after moving there, she became trapped in an abusive relationship that ended in divorce. She wound up depressed, on welfare, and lacking the skills, confidence, and economic means to support herself and her two children.

I kept in contact regularly with her and visited on several occasions. Beyond the sorrow I felt for her suffering, my aunt also came to symbolize for me the plight of so many immigrant women plagued by oppression, poverty, and haunted pasts.

Later, while studying abroad at the University of Natal, in South Africa, I began to delve deeper into the intense challenges faced by many women around the globe. While I developed a keen awareness of the problems, I also found a great sense of hope during a trip I made during college to my father’s native Bangladesh. There I was introduced to the Bangladeshi economist Muhammad Yunus’s work on microenterprise. Mr. Yunus had developed a program that, over time, extended scores of small loans to help people in his country try to rise out of poverty by becoming independent businesspeople. Microenterprise — the idea of launching a small, independent business — seemed to me the most realistic way to help many women gain the economic power and freedom necessary to improve their lot in life.

After I graduated from college in 1998, those interests led me to Northern California, where I worked for AmeriCorps in Microenterprise for Women, a program serving mainly low-income artisans and craftswomen in San Francisco’s North Bay. The program, while promising, ended up folding due to cash-flow issues. Yet I remained convinced its mission was worthy — and found it was one I couldn’t bring myself to abandon.

During my 18 months working with the program, I had seen so much need, and so much untapped potential in the immigrant women who were trying to build new lives in the United States.

I was convinced a nonprofit organization that emphasized improving language skills and offered entrepreneurial training would fill a pressing need. So I started taking steps toward launching what I called Creating Economic Opportunities for Women, or CEO Women. Not knowing where to start, I contacted several donors I knew and pitched my idea. A wealthy philanthropist who donated to Microenterprise for Women saw potential in my plan. She encouraged me to develop a detailed business plan and a PowerPoint presentation.

I did just that, but the timing couldn’t have been worse. Just as I was starting to make my pitch for funding, the dot-com bust hammered the region. Money became scarce, particularly for an unproven entity like mine. Over and over again, I heard the same thing: “Great idea, but we can’t afford to take the risk right now.” Meanwhile, the philanthropist who had initially encouraged me ended up committing her time and resources to an earthquake recovery effort in India.

Looking back, a sane person would have given up at that point and gotten a 9-to-5 job. But something about facing so much rejection pushed me to try even harder. I knew in my heart there was a need for what I was trying to do. While working a range of part-time jobs, I continued to try to develop CEO Women out of my bedroom.

Finally, in the winter of 2001, I landed my first grant. It was only $1,000, but it felt like a million bucks. Later that spring, I received two more grants — $2,500 from a local foundation and $5,000 from a bank. At last, I began to allow myself to believe that CEO Women could become a reality.

Emboldened by those grants and the enthusiasm and progress of our first clients, I returned to the potential donors who had rejected me two years before and submitted new applications. We started to get more support, including a $10,000 grant from Wells Fargo bank.

I was still running the program out of my bedroom when we struck on the idea of negotiating with the Oakland school district for space in one of their schools. It was a perfect match. They already had English-as-a-second-language courses going and the infrastructure and classroom space to serve the students. And we had the programming to enhance the learning and earning potential of many of their adult-education students. In 2003, we raised nearly $100,000, hired a business trainer, and launched our first business program.

We continued to grow in 2004, assisted greatly by an $80,000 grant from the Walter and Elise Haas Fund. So far, CEO Women has produced what I consider to be very promising results. Of our graduates, 76 percent have either launched a small business or gotten a job, and 50 percent have notably improved their English skills. In all, more than 300 women have been assisted, and we aim to help 150 more this year.

Of course, the real rewards are in seeing women like Wen-Fei Hsu, a 31-year-old Taiwanese immigrant who came to the United States almost four years ago. She had dropped out of art school because she didn’t understand the teachers or assignments. In CEO Women training programs, she honed her English and business skills. Today she is building a portfolio, interning at a magazine, pursuing a master’s degree in fine arts, and teaching Chinese to support herself.

When I look back, the struggles I went through are immeasurably useful to me today. Although I haven’t known the personal horrors and hardships that many of our clients face, the journey I took to get CEO Women established in many ways mirrors the journey taken by our clients as they try to launch businesses.

Now that we are growing in the Oakland area, I aim to expand our reach across the country. It has always been my vision to connect women around the country and world in a meaningful and empowering way. There are many successful women out there who I believe are eager to share their knowledge and expertise. Too often, immigrant women are stereotyped as lazy and uneducated. And many — like my beloved aunt — never get the chance to realize their talents. Yet, given the proper tools, training, and support system, they can truly live the American dream.