WomanCraft is owned by Deborah's Place, a non-profit organization founded to help homeless and formerly homeless women in the Chicago area. Deborah's Place has developed a number of services and residential programs as well as supportive housing. Four years ago Deborah's Place organized a committee to plan a business that would be a supportive workplace where women could earn income, engage in meaningful work, improve job skills, and build a work history. This team was made up of program participants, volunteers, and staff. They established the following criteria for the business: to provide regular employment that would be accessible for all participants of Deborah's Place; to build upon their strengths and assets; to remain consistent with the mission and values of Deborah's Place; and to be self-supporting in five years. Ideas examined by the group included a grocery store, a sailboat cover manufacturer, and a laundromat. The team visited other social business ventures in the United States where they were advised to start with what the women like to make. Because of high interest in crafts at the learning center at Deborah's Place and participants' interest in working with the art therapist on staff, the team developed the idea of a crafts-based business that would feature handmade paper and hand-crafted jewelry.   The next step included a feasibility study, funded by the Corporation for Supportive Housing, which also paid for technical assistance, provided by Shorebank Advisory Services. The study included: space, capital, and equipment needed for start-up; market research; and other financial considerations. The team then launched prototype workshops. These allowed for early development and helped gauge both participants' interest in the product lines and how long it would take them to make sample items.   The board of Deborah's Place reviewed the results of these early steps and decided to launch the business as a subsidiary. In the fall of 1998, WomanCraft, Inc. became a reality. Its staff includes business manager Nancy Phillips, who has a Master of Science degree in Human Services Administration, and job trainer Mary Tepper, who holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts with an emphasis in hand papermaking and artist's books. They and their board of directors ensure that WomanCraft meets its dual bottom line of business and social goals. Even with abundant advanced planning and research, the staff concedes that they faced challenges during the first year of operation, in product development, training workers, managing limited space, production, and marketing. After one year, though, WomanCraft items now sell well, and artisans and staff alike enjoy the spirit of success.   Deborah's place leases space to WomanCraft: an enclosed dock and storage area for waste paper and a single, split-level studio space with a high ceiling. The brick walls are painted a vibrant blue. For safety and security, visitors and employees must be buzzed into the building. The workers, who are responsible for clean-up as part of their day, maintain an orderly and tidy space. The area dedicated to making the paper is filled with wooden tables resting on a cement floor. Plumbing is a challenge: the floor drain is inaccessible and the only sink is across the room from the power source for the blenders used to make pulp. On the upper level are spaces for assembling and packaging items made in the workshop (including beaded jewelry). Desks for the staff members are also on this level.    One of the most interesting items is the bulletin board, which lists daily assignments. The women check this board and know precisely how many of each product they need to make, assemble, or package that day. They find there, for instance, which pulps they will help to process and how many sheets they will have to make from it. Even mundane tasks are listed so that they can be accomplished systematically. The assignment sheets and information on security procedures reflect the staff's dedication to a safe and organized workplace. In this way the women build skills and confidence while working.   WomanCraft employs six women as artisans in the workshop; four of them have been with the business since the beginning. All of them have a genuine interest in building employment skills, in developing a job history, and in fulfilling the commitments that a traditional job entails, even in the face of problems with finances, health, or children. They all like working with their hands. The women, who must apply for the artisan positions and be formally hired, are expected to perform their jobs in a regular and careful manner. Though each WomanCraft artisan seems to have a favorite task, everyone participates in all areas of production and distribution. The artisans commit to a three-day work week but when volume is high, such as for the holidays, more work days are available and the artisans take on extra shifts.   WomanCraft trains its artisans in the technical skills they need, through videos and hands-on instruction by staff members. All instruction must be geared to the special needs of the workers, so the methods used are extremely visual and encourage learning in a calm, organized environment. Not all education takes place in the studio space, though. To celebrate the successes of the first year, the women plan to take a field trip to Twinrocker Handmade Paper, in Indiana.   The staff at WomanCraft prides itself on what they call the "curriculum." They set aside an hour or so once a week to practice skills especially suited for this particular work force: communication, quality control, treatment of tools, promptness, careful production habits, sense of self, and teamwork. They also discuss more complex issues, such as costing and pricing items, managing inventory, and accruing and using benefit time. These periods include basic education, which helps participants make the transition to a more stable work life. This leads to a more stable social life, as well, because issues such as child custody and rent are attached to employment and regular income. This approach helps make WomanCraft very effective: the participants are carefully developing basic life skills while they make paper and other items.    Impressively, WomanCraft is an economically run, true recycling facility. This has helped keep start-up costs extremely low. The loading dock adjacent to the studio is stacked with boxes of paper (post-consumer waste from Deborah's Place), sorted by color. WomanCraft's simply bound sample book features their product line, now more than twenty papers that vary in color and texture. The range of effects comes from carefully sorting the paper and various inclusions. The dried flowers used in some of the sheets are leftovers from the floral department of a local chain grocery store. WomanCraft picks up the flowers and the women carefully air dry and sort the various colors and varieties of plant material. This material waits in drawers to be added to pulps according to recipes developed in the studio. Natural dyes from the flowers and inclusions, such as coffee, add color to the recycled materials. They occasionally use small amounts of pigments to enhance the color of the pulp. Dyed hemp fiber left over from book and card assembly has been included in some of the papers as a decorative effect. No sizing is added to the vats because enough remains in the recycled commercial paper. The papers manufactured from these limited resources are impressive, and not just visually: these recycled products enhance the organization's efforts at low cost.    Anyone examining the line of papers would be amazed at the limited equipment the artisans employ. The commercial papers are cut up using a portable paper shredder placed over a waste basket . The confetti-like strips are blended, handful by handful, in kitchen blenders. The artisans carry water to the blenders in bottles and fill the vats slowly, according to the color proportions needed to make the day's paper. Six women run the individual blenders for the hour it takes to make enough pulp for that day. All agree that blending the pulp is the most labor intensive part of their task. After the vats are full, the work then shifts to empty tables spread with donated, clean cotton bed sheets. The artisans use commercially available moulds and deckles. They couch the paper onto the cotton sheets, where it air dries. The amount of paper they can make each day is somewhat limited as the large bed sheets take up space, whether lying on the tables or draped over nearby railings. The women sometimes stack the bed sheets with paper couched on them on the worktables, as one would with traditional felts. Currently no press is used in making the paper at WomanCraft.   From simple materials and methods the artisans at WomanCraft have developed a successful line of paper items for sale. These include writing paper and envelopes, note cards, simple books and journals, folios of artists' papers, and gift bags. They have also developed specialty packaging papers, providing soap wrappers for Enterprising Kitchen and candle wrappers for Edinboro Creations. In addition to developing a strong product line responding to initial consumer and business needs, they have done well at marketing. Direct sales take up some of their energy; staff and artisans sell directly at craft fairs and elsewhere in and around Chicago. They also distribute a professionally designed, color brochure, which has expanded their mail order business and enhanced their professional profile. Seven regional retail outlets now offer their papers. WomanCraft papers are also finding customers in the national marketplace through Heartbeats and Marketplace of India. WomanCraft is flourishing because of sound business practices, careful design and packaging, a hand-crafted aesthetic, ecological appeal, and the centrality of the organization's intent.   The staff and artisans at WomanCraft are enthusiastic and hardworking but they are also realistic about their goals for the business and remain cognizant of the importance of their social purpose. WomanCraft exists to help its participants build job-related skills, a work history, and social success. The labor, therefore, must have meaning and dignity. Their economic mission is to keep the workshop open to offer employment by producing quality goods. These items were tested through market research but no one predicted the successfulness that real production and distribution have created. Paper was expected to account for only ten to twelve percent of the goods manufactured and sold by WomanCraft, with jewelry as the major source of income. However, paper has sold surprisingly well from the beginning and accounts for fifty to sixty percent of sales to date. Since the sales come from a diverse base, the outlook looks positive for sustained growth of paper manufacture and sales. And although they are selling in the same marketplace as papers made in the third world, WomanCraft feels confident that the items are sufficiently different that consumers will support both third world and North American recycled and handmade papers.   The staff at WomanCraft has identified problems that must be resolved for healthy growth and further economic success. They recognize the need for a beater or a hydro-pulper to cut labor costs and a press to keep up with increasing orders. These they hope to acquire through donations. In addition, workspace is becoming over-extended. They need a permanent area for storing, packing, and shipping, to increase efficiency and hold down labor costs. As a variety of tasks are now performed in the same tight space, artisans must constantly shift and put away stacks of materials, parts, packing supplies, and finished products. With increased volume, demands on the space will only intensify. The last major challenge concerns the products that WomanCraft offers for sale. They are eager to develop additional paper items that meet consumer preferences and needs, recognizing the importance of this for long-term success. This ongoing development process demands much time and creativity from artisans and staff alike, but will ensure that employment will continue.   "Creating New Beginnings" appears on the front of the WomanCraft brochure. As this fledgling business grows it will be supplying a variety of consumers with recycled handmade paper products. It will also be executing its social mission to foster new skills in its women artisans. Both the paper and the people have new beginnings at WomanCraft, thanks to careful business planning, beautiful products, and worker development.