JERSEY CITY, New Jersey (CNN) — Alfa Demmellash grew up on less than a dollar a day, and against the backdrop of torture and murder. But these days she’s living the American dream and helping others do the same.
Alfa Demmellash helps low-income entrepreneurs in New Jersey start or grow their businesses.
“Entrepreneurs are at the very heart of what the American dream is all about,” says Demmellash, a native of Ethiopia. And from her small office in Jersey City, her nonprofit, Rising Tide Capital, is helping small businesses flourish.
Robin Munn, who runs a flower shop in Jersey City, says the skills she learned through Demmellash helped her transform the way she operates her business. “I was thinking about closing, but once I started taking the classes I found that the fire came back.”
Kim Bratten, a 39-year-old painter and mother of six, says she’s seen her yearly income increase by 50 percent since she started working with Demmellash and her team. “They put hope back into the community,” Bratten says.
Demmellash’s own struggle began in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, amid instability and unrest. Thousands of Ethiopians — including her aunt — disappeared or were tortured and/or killed under the ruling military regime.
When Demmellash was 2, her mother fled the country, leaving the toddler in the care of her grandmother and aunt. Demmellash lived on less than a dollar a day but never considered herself poor.
Nearly a decade later, Demmellash and her mother reunited in Boston, Massachusetts. But Demmellash found her mother wasn’t living the American dream she’d envisioned.
“I [thought] I would find my mom in a beautiful mansion with trees [and] gold everywhere,” recalls Demmellash, now 29. “I was shocked when I found her in her tiny apartment … working very, very hard.”
Her mother had worked as a waitress during the day and a seamstress at night to earn money to bring her daughter to the United States. Watching her mother sew beautiful gowns for low profits, Demmellash thought there had to be a way for her to increase what she was making as a seamstress.
“Even though she had the skills, she did not necessarily have the business skills,” she says, adding that her mother’s pricing “was completely off.”
Still, her mother worked tirelessly to keep her daughter adequately fed, clothed and in school. Demmellash was later admitted to Harvard University, which she was able to attend with the help of “wonderful financial aid.”
At Harvard, Demmellash and classmate Alex Forrester discussed what their generation could do to alleviate poverty on a local level. They set out to learn what resources people needed — or as Demmellash says, “to find people like my mom.”
In 2004, the pair started Rising Tide Capital (RTC) to help those who had ideas and abilities but needed the education and support to launch or grow their businesses.
“You hear a lot of talk about Main Street and Wall Street, but no one really talks about how exactly you go about helping the Mom-and-Pops,” says Demmellash.
The group runs the Community Business Academy, an intensive training session coupled with year-round coaching and mentorship to help individuals “really work on the hands-on management side of their business,” Demmellash says. The organization supports underserved populations, including women, the formerly incarcerated, minorities, unemployed and working poor, and immigrants and refugees.
Demmellash and Forrester — now married — have helped 250 entrepreneurs and small-business owners in New Jersey so far, 70 percent of whom are single mothers.
RTC raises money from corporations and works with local governments for funding in order to provide classes and support its participants at affordable costs. Participants pay a small materials and registration fee based on their income range: either $100 or $225 for the course that Demmellash says would cost thousands of dollars otherwise.
The organization has also built partnerships with micro-lenders, so when students are ready, the lenders provide financing.
“The ability to become self-reliant, to have economic hope, [that is] the fabric of this country and we have to fight for it,” Demmellash says.
Many of RTC’s students use the increased earnings from their new business to supplement their wages, allowing them to better provide for their families and transform the face of their communities, according to Demmellash.
“There are thousands of entrepreneurs, millions across this country, who do incredible things and make money to put food on the table, to pay their bills, and to save for the future and their children,” she says.
“If we were to literally bank on them, invest in them [and] support them … that’s the kind of stuff that changes lives and strengthens families.”
THE grass-roots protests that have engulfed Iran since its presidential election last week have grabbed America’s attention and captured headlines — unfortunately, so has the clamor from neoconservatives urging President Obama to denounce the voting as a sham and insert ourselves directly in Iran’s unrest.
No less a figure than Senator John McCain, the Republican presidential nominee in 2008, has denounced President Obama’s response as “tepid.” He has also claimed that “if we are steadfast eventually the Iranian people will prevail.”
Mr. McCain’s rhetoric, of course, would be cathartic for any American policy maker weary of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s hostile message of division. We are all inspired by Iran’s peaceful demonstrations, the likes of which have not been seen there in three decades. Our sympathies are with those Iranians who seek a more respectful, cooperative relationship with the world. Watching heartbreaking video images of Basij paramilitaries terrorizing protesters, we feel the temptation to respond emotionally.
There’s just one problem. If we actually want to empower the Iranian people, we have to understand how our words can be manipulated and used against us to strengthen the clerical establishment, distract Iranians from a failing economy and rally a fiercely independent populace against outside interference. Iran’s hard-liners are already working hard to pin the election dispute, and the protests, as the result of American meddling. On Wednesday, the Iranian Foreign Ministry chastised American officials for “interventionist” statements. Government complaints of slanted coverage by the foreign press are rising in pitch.
We can’t escape the reality that for reformers in Tehran to have any hope for success, Iran’s election must be about Iran — not America. And if the street protests of the last days have taught us anything, it is that this is an Iranian moment, not an American one.
To understand this, we need only listen to the demonstrators. Their signs, slogans and Twitter postings say nothing about getting help from Washington — instead they are adapting the language of their own revolution. When Iranians shout “Allahu Akbar” from rooftops, they are repackaging the signature gesture of the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Mir Hussein Moussavi, the leading reformist presidential candidate, has advocated a more conciliatory approach to America. But his political legitimacy comes from his revolutionary credentials for helping overthrow an American-backed shah — a history that today helps protect protesters against accusations of being an American “fifth column.”
Iran’s internal change is happening on two levels: on the streets, but also within the clerical establishment. Ultimately, no matter who wins the election, our fundamental security challenge will be the same — preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon. That will take patient effort, and premature engagement in Iran’s domestic politics may well make negotiations more difficult.
What comes next in Iran is unclear. What is clear is that the tough talk that Senator McCain advocates got us nowhere for the last eight years. Our saber-rattling only empowered hard-liners and put reformers on the defensive. An Iranian president who advocated a “dialogue among civilizations” and societal reforms was replaced by one who denied the Holocaust and routinely called for the destruction of Israel.
Meanwhile, Iran’s influence in the Middle East expanded and it made considerable progress on its nuclear program.
The last thing we should do is give Mr. Ahmadinejad an opportunity to evoke the 1953 American-sponsored coup, which ousted Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh and returned Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi to power. Doing so would only allow him to cast himself as a modern-day Mossadegh, standing up for principle against a Western puppet.
Words are important. President Obama has made that clear in devising a new approach to Iran and the wider Muslim world. In offering negotiation and conciliation, he has put the region’s extremists on the defensive.
We have seen the results of this new vision already. His outreach may have helped to make a difference in the election last week in Lebanon, where a pro-Western coalition surprised many by winning a resounding victory.
We’re seeing signs that it’s having an impact in Iran as well. Returning to harsh criticism now would only erase this progress, empower hard-liners in Iran who want to see negotiations fail and undercut those who have risen up in support of a better relationship.
John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, is the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the first positive step on the part of the U.S. Department of State after a decade of failed policy by the previous officials who had contributed to the chaos in the Horn of Africa by financing Meles Zenawi’s tribal junta that has turned the whole region into a war zone. The best thing for the U.S. State Department to do is to stay out of the Horn of Africa and allow the people of the region to sort things out for themselves. All the current wars and conflicts in the Horn have the U.S. finger prints on them. Stop fueling the Woyanne killing machine and Meles Zenawi and his tribal warlords will have no option but to sit down and negotiate on equal terms with all the political players in the region for the sake of their own survival.
The United States Seeks to Engage Eritrea
By Tizita Belachew | VOA
The U.S. Secretary of State’s assistant for African affairs told VOA’s Tizita Belachew today “the door is open” to improving relations between the United States and Eritrea.
In his second month on the job, Secretary of State for Africa Johnnie Carson today discussed issues confronting several African countries including Eritrea, Ethiopia, Sudan, Kenya, Somalia and Zimbabwe. Carson has previously accused the State of Eritrea of shipping arms and fighters to Somalia to support the insurgency of al-Shabab. Today, the assistant secretary revealed a surprising twist in his efforts to engage Eritrea.
Carson, who has served as a U.S. diplomat in six African countries, told Tizita, “I met with the Eritrean ambassador and asked to meet with President Isaias Afwerki. If he will give me a visa, I will be there.” However, after Carson left his passport with the Eritrean embassy “for an extended period” he was surprised to find it returned “without a visa in it.”
“If relations are not improved it will not be because we’re not trying to act as a respected partner.”
Carson said the Obama administration seeks to normalize strained relations. “This administration seeks a better relationship with Eritrea,” Carson said. The most recent difference is over Eritrea’s support for the insurgency against the Transitional Government of Somalia.
President Afewerki told VOA’s Tigrigna service in Asmara two weeks ago that he looks forward to meeting Carson, but Afewerki repeatedly denies flying weapons to al-Shabab in Somalia.
“There is a growing volume of real and circumstantial evidence of continuing relations between Asmara and al-Shabab,” Carson said today. “We encourage Eritrea to cut off relations” with the insurgents, he said. “There should be no transit for foreign fighters through Eritrea.”
“The door is open if they are transparent on Somalia.”
After receiving over $1 billion from donors and claiming an annual growth rate of over 10 percent, Ethiopians are growing more poor by the day. The most vulnerable victims of Ethiopia’s tribal junta are the children, as you see in the video below.
MOGADISHU, Somalia — Somali government forces attacked rebel strongholds in Mogadishu on Wednesday, triggering battles that killed at least 11 people, including the capital’s police chief, witnesses and officials said.
Residents cowered in their homes or took cover behind buildings as mortars slammed into the city. Islamist fighters wearing headscarves and ammunition belts draped over their shoulders were seen arriving from the outskirts of the capital to join the battle.
“A mortar landed on a neighbor’s house and killed two people and injured four others,” said Abdiwali Dahir.
Police spokesman Col. Abdullahi Hassan Barise confirmed the death of police chief Col. Ali Said, but had no further details.
Another witness said he saw five corpses lying in the capital’s battle-scarred streets. Farah Abdi told The Associated Press on the phone as the sound of heavy gunfire echoed in the background that three were civilians. Abdi said that residents identified the other two as the bodies of an Islamist fighter and a government soldier.
An administrator at Medina Hospital, Ali Ade, said the hospital received 39 wounded people. Ade said three of them died from their wounds.
Abdulqadir Haji of Amin Voluntary Ambulance services said his team ferried 20 wounded people to hospitals.
Mogadishu resident Hanad Abdi Garun, who was huddled up in his house in Hodan district in the capital’s south, said government forces brought in more reinforcements overnight before they started the offensive against Islamist bases.
“This is the strongest fighting we have seen in recent months,” said resident Asha Moalim. “We are ducking inside our rooms.”
A surge of violence in Somalia’s capital since last month has killed about 200 people as insurgents battle the government and its allies. Insurgents want to topple the Western-backed government and install a strict Islamic state.
The government only controls a few blocks of Mogadishu with the help of an African Union peacekeeping force that guards the air and sea ports and other key government installations. Different Islamic insurgent groups control the rest of Mogadishu.
The U.N. says the conflict between the government forces and Islamist fighters has displaced more than 122,000 people since the start of the latest fighting on 7 May.
Somalia has had no effective central government for nearly two decades. The lawlessness on land has also allowed piracy to thrive off the Somali coast, making Somalia the world’s top piracy hotspot.
The U.S. Secretary of State’s assistant for African affairs told VOA’s Tizita Belachew today “the door is open” to improving relations between the United States and Eritrea.