Dry-cleaning business will set students on path to fresh start

Dry-cleaning business will set students on path to fresh start Helping to end the cycle of poverty in a community may seem like a tall order for a dry-cleaning business. But about a quarter of participants, she said, tend to lack job skills needed to move into employment, so the revamped MAP program will offer that, while providing what she hopes will be an economically viable business service. "It's to help make our community better," she said about her plan, "and to help you the people in the community be better. "One purpose is certainly to stimulate economic development, and it also has to focus on redevelopment and job creation," Brown said. In late April, Shinall will open Taylor's One Price Cleaners, a dry-cleaning operation in 4,400 square feet of renovated space at 4522 Verona Road, in the former JB Craft Mall building near Home Depot. The second thing which will be different is who else will benefit. The students will come from the Madison Apprenticeship Program, or MAP, an educational/vocational program that Shinall has run since 2005. So she did meet the criteria with what she plans to do. The first unusual thing about the new company is that it will charge the same price — $3. (Men's dress shirts will be $2. 29. Taylor's One Price Cleaners will accomplish that by tacking on 12 weeks of job skills training as a graduation requirement in the program, which Shinall said already has assisted get former drug dealers and others off the streets and into college or good jobs. City of Madison staffer Percy Brown is helping to oversee Shinall's $420,000 low-interest loan from the Community Development Authority. Permanent jobs figure into Shinall's plan because some program graduates, and perhaps other applicants, may be ready to get one of the 10 permanent jobs the business expects to provide, in positions such as customer service, cashiering, janitorial work, dry cleaning or business administration. Dry-cleaning business will set students on path to fresh start Trade News selected by Local Linkup on 12/03/2012