Stanford Students Help Small New Orleans Firms Recover

By: Ann M. Simmons
04:00 PDT

New Orleans – The Community Book Center, a longtime fixture on Bayou Road in the Esplanade Ridge neighborhood, was one of the numerous small-business casualties of Hurricane Katrina. The storm ravaged the venture that Vera Warren-Williams had nurtured for 25 years, where she sold African American novels, required school reading texts, gifts and artwork.

"You know you have to come back," Warren-Williams said. "But when you looked at the devastation, you weren't quite sure how."

Help arrived in the form of a group of Stanford University MBA students, and their ideas have given her hope.

With the assistance of the Idea Village, a nonprofit that has provided scores of local businesses with technical support, contacts and capital, the students have adopted several enterprises, among them the Community Book Center. Their mission is to show these businesses ways to grow and sustain in post-Katrina New Orleans.

"Education is what you learn in the classroom," said Daryn Dodson, 27, who organized the 15-member student group. "It doesn't mean anything until you apply it practically."

The storm physically destroyed or financially hurt more than 80 percent of the 12,695 small businesses that were in Orleans Parish, according to local business officials. The few that have reopened are struggling to stay afloat with fewer customers, reduced profits and higher labor costs.

Dodson began his master's program the week Katrina battered New Orleans. As he sat in his dorm room, watching the disaster unfold on television, he felt compelled to do something.

He started fundraising drives, including a "gumbo get-together" where he and fellow students raised about $7,000 and donated it to Habitat for Humanity.

"We sent the check, but it felt so empty," Dodson recalled.

In December 2005, during winter break, Dodson took his first trip to New Orleans, visiting relief organizations, surveying the ruins and determining what assistance was needed. On spring break, he was back with two dozen other Stanford students helping to gut flood-damaged homes.

The most recent trip, Dodson's fourth, brought him and fellow Stanford MBA students Sarah Chandler Mallari, Shara Tortora and Eugene Baah to the Community Book Center.

For Warren-Williams, it wasn't a moment too soon.

Student volunteers had helped her clean and gut the store shortly after the storm. Other volunteers tackled the mold while her husband's cousin, a contractor, fixed the roof. Community members, customers and local grassroots groups donated plywood, paint and other materials. The Idea Village provided technical assistance and a $5,000 grant, which Warren-Williams said she used to replace inventory.

Now Dodson and his group are helping her tap into the remaining customer base, for which all the surviving neighborhood businesses compete, and get the dollars flowing.

"Folks like Daryn and his team allow all of us to look beyond ... to look forward," said Tim Williamson, Idea Village's president. "It allows people like Vera to say, 'OK, I survived, now what's the plan going forward?' "

This week, Dodson and his team met with the "Belle of Bayou Road," as Warren-Williams is known. The group huddled in the rear courtyard of the Community Book Center, which reopened in December but closed again recently for further renovation.

The Stanford team presented Warren-Williams with several recommendations, including erecting a sign at the end of her street that would catch the eye of motorists and pedestrians on the adjoining thoroughfare.

Other recommendations included displaying books and artwork on the sidewalk in front of the store, placing pamphlets in neighboring businesses, and setting up a coffee shop and a photocopy-print-and-fax center that someone else would lease from Warren-Williams and run.

"Sounds good," Warren-Williams told the students, adding later that she thought the recommendations "were positive, workable things that are immediately attainable."

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/04/05/MNG5KP2RIC1.DTL
This article appeared on page A - 9 of the San Francisco Chronicle