Passion to Purse and YWCA Greensboro are empowering women to start small businesses as a big step toward financial security.

In 2015, the Community Foundation of Greater Greensboro’s Women to Women endowment fund awarded its first-ever, multi-year grant to Passion to Purse. This program, offered through YWCA Greensboro, is aimed at ending the cycle of poverty and homelessness by helping low-income and minority women start micro-enterprises.

While the core of the program remains an eight-week course covering business development, market research, pricing, and financial projections, it also offers a safe space for these women.

“It was like a support group for them,” said Rosalyn Womack, founding director of Passion to Purse. As the women worked on their individual businesses, they were also helping each other through the adversities they faced in their own personal lives.

Now in its fifth year, Passion to Purse has countless success stories of helping women create jobs for themselves. From selling hair products and hand-made soaps to opening bakeries and online consignment stores for designer children’s clothing, the “graduates” of Passion to Purse can be found living and thriving across our community.

The program is also thriving. Since receiving its first grant from Women to Women, Passion to Purse has been able to secure additional funding due in part to the prestige of that first grant.

“It makes other funders very comfortable [to know that] Women to Women found it fundable,” said Lindy Garnette, Chief Executive Officer of YWCA Greensboro.

To learn how you can donate to causes like this and others that are empowering people to create better lives for themselves, contact us today.