Last Friday and Saturday I attended a workshop on business readiness planning in order to be eligible to continue on in a ten week class on business training hosted and taught by Enterprise for Equity, a local nonprofit that aims to give local entrepreneurs the skills to run their own successful small business. The business that I want to create is called The Tité Project. The Tité Project is a social enterprise that works with fair trade artisans from around the globe and connects them with local brick and mortar retailers (such as Traditions in downtown Olympia). This provides communities like ours with a simple and affordable opportunity to support safe working conditions, family living wages, and sustainable community development projects with every purchase. –Those last two sentences are what is called a mission statement- A mission statement is a short concise introduction to your business, clearly describing the who, what, when, and where for consumers. I have been struggling to come up with such a description for a few weeks now, but Enterprise for Equity gave me the tools I needed!

            I am very excited for this class (Eye of the Story) because for my main project where I am going to begin my work with one local artisan! Through the ten weeks I plan to create a documentary looking into the inspiration behind the artist’s style and follow them through the trials and tribulations of one of their current pieces. I would also like to use this project as an opportunity to learn how to work with an artist and gain the skills to share someone else’s stories truthfully and in the most empowering way.