Enterprising Staffing Solutions (ESS)

 

Chain Reaction

 

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The Program’s focus is to create living wage jobs and build community-owned businesses.

Using Enterprising Staffing Solutions (ESS) as a model, it primarily seeks to create businesses that build and ensure long-term assets for neighborhood residents. The program also creates ONE DC (formerly Manna CDC) owned businesses to generate operating revenue for the organization (e.g. Maggie Moo’s). ONE DC also undertakes other resident-led initiatives in conjunction with neighborhood leaders currently receiving practical experience in economic development through the ONE DC’s partnership with The ICA Group. 

 

   Community Economic Development Goals  

  1. Foster democratically controlled community wealth and assets (e.g. community stock-held companies, worker-owned co-ops and credit unions), as well as sole proprietor local small business owners

  2. Develop projects with active guidance, participation, and leadership of residents

  3. Promote and build cooperation and communication among residents and increase access to alternative economic development

  4. Increase living-wage initiatives, employment opportunities and community entrepreneurship for residents

Examples of our current work include:

 

 

   Enterprising Staffing Solutions (ESS)  

Unemployment in the Shaw neighborhood has traditionally been significantly higher than in many other Washington, DC neighborhoods. In 1998 ONE DC and the ICA Group (from Boston), in partnership with the National Cooperative Bank, established Enterprising Staffing Solutions, a for-profit temporary-to-permanent employment agency. ESS is a worker-owned agency that places workers primarily in entry-level positions as a step towards full-time employment. ESS is a community and worker-owned cooperative so that our long-time employees can share in the benefits of their labor.

Click here for a one page PDF on ESS.

 

 

   Chain Reaction  

 

Chain Reaction is a project of the Shaw EcoVillage (SEV) that gives youth concrete job skills as bike mechanics and operators of a community bike shop. ONE DC is a social investor in Chain Reaction and is examining with SEV the possibility of developing the bike shop as a cooperatively-owned business.

 

 

    Maggie Moo's  

 

 

ONE DC opened a Maggie Moo’s ice-cream franchise in the U Street corridor in 2004. The store provided jobs for community members, channeled profits into other ONE DC initiatives, and increased ONE DC’s visibility in the community. After one and a half years of managing the store, ONE DC assisted a local resident in purchasing the franchise.