The University Daily Kansan
Tuesday, September 28, 1999
Students apply entrepreneurial skills in service for blind
By Amy Train writer @ kansan.com Kansan staff writer
This fall, University of Kansas School of Business classes have stepped in to run a catalog service for the blind, putting a business plan, developed last semester, into action.
Matt Twetl, Hutchinson senior, paints the ceiling of the Pélathé Community Resource Center basement yesterday. The School of Business has been renovating the basement to accommodate a catalog service for the blind. Photo by Roger Nnager/KANSAN.
July 1986 "We wanted to learn how to run the business more efficiently," Eble said.
The catalog service offers blind people the opportunity to shop for themselves for the first time, Eble said. There are many different Home Readers, tapes of catalogs, available for the blind or sight impaired. Land's End, Radio Shack and Schwann's are among the 35 catalogs available for customers.
action.
Jeff Morrow, lecturer in the school, said the catalog service initially was run by Kathy Eble, a blind woman, and her husband from their home in Edgerton. But, he said, the business was dwindling, so the Ebles turned to the MBA Entrepreneurship class, BUS 895, at the Regents Center in Kansas City for help in July 1998.
Eble receives numerous calls and letters from those who have used the Home Readers. Several people only have dreamed of being able to shop for themselves.
shop for themselves.
"Hearing the success stories and
knowing what a difference the Home Readers are making in their lives is the biggest reward," she said.
Morrow said that the business would attract people through word of mouth.
or mouth.
Once the word gets out, the Ebles and Morrow are hoping to expand nationwide.
historicwk.
The school receives 25 percent of the profit, the Home Reader Business receives 50 percent and the Pelathe Community Resource Center, 1423 Haskell Ave., receives 25 percent of the profit. The business also will pay Pelathe 5 percent of the profit as rent taken from the school's dividend.
school's drivers.
"It gives me experience because it is a real-world, business operation," said Jason Taylor, KU Students in Free Enterprise president. "Either a business is going to succeed or fail. I think that this one is a winner."
is a winner.
A group of six women and one man currently record the catalogs onto cassette. These cassettes are then dubbed onto special 4-track tapes.
tapes:
A group of 22 students, three entrepreneurship interns,
Morrow, Kathy and her husband are joining forces to run the catalog service. They are renovating a 12,400 square-foot space at Pelâthac.
"It is definitely a daunting task."
Morrow said.
Pelathé received some grant money to help Home Readers get the location ready. It also has supplied the materials needed, Morrow said.
Morrow said.
Renovations began Sept. 12. So far, the walls have been built and the ceilings have been sheet-rocked. Equipment will be installed after the physical renovations are completed. The Home
Reader business will be operating from Pélathe by Oct. 15.
The program is being partially funded with a $25,000 grant from the Kauffman Foundation's social entrepreneurial grant program. The grant was matched by the School of Business.
The Kauffman grant was designed to help establish an internship program. Interns are paid $10 per hour and graduate students make $15, Morrow said.
Last fall the entrepreneurship class studied the feasibility by researching the market potential for the business, and the small business management class wrote a business plan. The next semester the small business class wrote a business plan for Home Readers as a class project.
project:
"I definitely think that it is an
overwhelming task right now," said Mike Ensz, Leawood senior in the small business management class. "But, I think we are heading in the right direction by laying the foundation to accomplish the goals that we have set."
Eble started the catalog service in March 1996, but sought help from Morrow and his students last summer.
But even with help, publicity efforts have not progressed as projected. The business now has 1,800 customers. Eble said the goal was to have 5,000 by Christmas.
"We plan to launch a publicity campaign to reach the entire market," he said. "We are hitting the wall everywhere. But, we are not disheartened. It just makes us more focused and earnest on the approach."
Morrow said his group had an agreement to work with the catalogue service through next Christmas season. The graduate-level team is designing systems so that Home Reader can be fully operated by the blind when the transition is complete.
17ths. The real-world application of this project takes students beyond the classroom, Marrow said.
ssuc.
"You can't do a better job of educating this," he said.
Receding floodwaters reveal damage of Hurricane Floyd
- Edited by Jamie Knodel
The Associated Press
PRINCEVILLE, N.C.— From a newspaper box coated with mud, the headline on the front page of the Sept. 15 local paper presaged what was to come: "Edgecombe hunkers down for Floyd hit."
This town founded by ex-slaves prepared as best it could. But sandbags piled along an earthen dam did nothing to stop the swollen Tar River from spilling its banks, swallowing Princeville under 23 feet of water.
After 10 days, floodwaters finally receded enough Sunday to allow a small group of reporters to tour
part of the town that has come to epitomize the devastating flooding across eastern North Carolina in the wake of Hurricane Floyd.
Many of Princeville's 1,800 residents, who have been homeless since Sept. 17, were anxious to survey the damage for themselves.
"I just want to go back in," said 16-year-old Dazzala Knight, standing outside one of Edgecombe County's 10 shelters. "My artwork is in there, and it's probably ruined."
Preliminary estimates show Hurricane Floyd caused $70.2 million in housing damage in eastern North Carolina, with more than
3,000 homes destroyed or seriously damaged. The storm has been blamed for 47 deaths.
A team began identifying bodies yesterday in some 130 caskets found floating in floodwaters since the Sept. 17 storm.
than a week in. In Princeville on Sunday, authorities continued searching for victims as some neighborhoods
Across the region, about 2,100 people remain in 21 shelters, their homes either inundated with water or simply unsafe. While some have been allowed to move into camping trailers, those in shelters for more than a week were getting edgy.
remained under at least 4 feet of water, which had moved some houses and mobile homes to the middle of the street. Residents won't be allowed back until the town is deemed safe.
Yet some houses, with wreaths hanging on front doors and cars parked under carports, appeared untouched by disaster except for a
town is deemed safe.
An odd assortment of items hung from tree branches: a toy airplane, a pair of rubber boots, a bag full of tin cans. Cars were piled at each other at &S J Auto Sales, and murky brown water lapped at the pumps at a gas station.
muddy line on the roof where the water had risen.
"There used to be a ball field right there," she said, tears rolling down her cheeks. "That's where the kids played."
water nad risen.
Diane LeFles, a spokeswoman for the Edgecombe sheriff's office and county school system, walked through the streets Sunday for the first time since the flood. She paused on the sidewalk of Princeville Montessori School, which was being renovated, and pointed to what appeared to be a pond.
in Greenville, where the Tar River was nearly 12 feet above
flood stage and parts of the town remain underwater, homes with a large orange "X" denoted a completed inspection. A box around the "X" sign condemnation.
A sign that At least one person has been accused of trying to take advantage of the misery left by Floyd.
of the misery Brian Scott L'Hommedieu, 33, was arrested Friday after he allegedly tried to charge $2,980 to clean flood-damaged carpets. The work should have cost about $650, said Ted Carlton of the state Alcohol Law Enforcement.
The carpets belong to the Topsail Beach Police Department.
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The University Of Kansas School of Business