Programs offering tiny grants help rural S.C. residents grow businesses

By Doug Pardue
The Post and Courier

ORANGEBURG — It would be hard to start a more rural, small business than Evelyn Haye has.

But that’s what she did 15 minutes west of this farm and college town, on S.C. Highway 4, halfway to Neeses, a village of fewer than 400.

• Evelyn Haye quit her job as a teacher to start her own business making personalized gift baskets, flower arrangements and more. She says the $3,000 she got in a grant from the New America nonprofit in Orangeburg helped her purchase some of the equipment she needed.

Creative Expressions & Gifts, the store Haye opened three years ago, is similar to a Hallmark shop except that Haye creates or personalizes almost everything herself, from flower arrangements and gift baskets to greeting cards, T-shirts and balloons. And instead of occupying part of a shopping mall, Haye’s store sits along a rural, two-lane highway in what used to be her garage.

It may not seem like much, but to Adolphus Johnson, Haye, and others like her, offer hope for economic stability in rural South Carolina. She’s an up-and-coming entrepreneur who just needed a helping hand in the form of a small grant.

The grant is among several community development programs in the state modeled somewhat on the microloan concept of a Bangladeshi economist who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for using tiny loans to help poor women start businesses.

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