ITHACA, N.Y. -- Give Cari Holcomb a pen and she'll draw you a picture. Disabilities may have limited her employability but have not prevented the 28-year-old Tompkins County, N.Y., resident from making artwork all her life, she says. That's why the idea of designing and making brightly colored datebook covers and greeting cards and selling them locally appealed to her.

You can now buy Holcomb's dinosaur datebooks for $5 apiece, and soon you will see her cards at the Ithaca Farmers' Market CraftAbility Collective booth run by Challenge Industries, a vocational rehabilitation agency in Ithaca. She and seven other Challenge service recipients with disabilities sell their work there Tuesdays and Saturdays thanks to a new Challenge self-employment program, a grant from the Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. Foundation and a little help from three Cornell University MBA students and a local credit union.

The students, Anthony Moon, Scott Hazlett and Jeff Nordin, attended Cornell's Johnson Graduate School of Management through its Park Leadership Fellows Program, which views community service as a leadership trait. Chosen partly for their past commitment to volunteering, they were among the 30 students admitted each year who complete a significant Leadership Service Project with lasting value in the community as part of their program and, in return, receive full tuition and a stipend. The idea is to get budding business leaders to learn the habit, and value, of community service early on. "It's an exceptional program," said Moon. "There's nothing like it anywhere else in the country."

For their project, the students linked up with Steve Lawrence, coordinator of Challenge's Supported Self-Employment Program. Like most communities, Tompkins County has residents who face barriers to employment, such as physical and mental disabilities, Lawrence told them. There are jobs for some, but not all, of these people, he said. He told the students that Challenge had surveyed its service recipients and discovered many, Holcomb among them, had talents and interests they wanted to develop further and perhaps earn money by doing so and that he was looking for ways to create small business opportunities for them. "We wanted to give them a taste of the American dream, to turn their ideas and hobbies into business ventures," said Lawrence. Challenge applied for and got a three-year grant from the Kennedy Foundation for the self-employment project but needed to create a business module for its service recipients that could be easily replicated in other communities -- a stipulation of the grant. That's where the Park fellows came in.

A tour of Challenge last fall introduced them to the people they would be helping. "A constant source of inspiration for us," said Moon, "is seeing what a courageous thing these individuals are doing. It's difficult to start a business even when you're not limited by disabilities. It's a tremendous risk, and we wanted to make sure they had the right support and tools."

Over the past year, the students developed BizPal, a business plan module that helps people with special needs and no business training, and their support teams, launch and run their own part-time small businesses. The "toolkit" includes a training workbook and step-by-step manual. The workbook outlines all the processes for starting a small business, and the manual gives details on how to go about it, via a series of key questions, such as "what type of customer will you target?" A sample marketing survey is included, as is a financial section with simplified cash-flow and projected-income statements. The books are geared to the service recipients' support team, who can coach them through the process.

"Everybody needs some kind of support in starting a business, whether it's marketing or bookkeeping," said Lawrence. The Park fellows offered "a level of expertise that we wouldn't have had on our own." BizPal manuals, workbooks and computer diskettes with the books' contents will be sent to interested agencies around the country at no cost.

In addition, Challenge service recipients who put their business startup funds and earnings in an Individual Development Account (IDA) at Ithaca's Alternatives Federal Credit Union get 2-to-1 matching funds from the Kennedy Foundation. "IDAs help low-income people purchase assets and develop a habit of savings," said Deirdre Silverman, who runs the IDA program at the credit union. Holcomb purchased desktop-publishing equipment with her funds.

Other Challenge self-employment initiatives include jewelry-making, photography and a dog-walking and pet-sitting service. In the planning stages are lawn, garden and landscaping care, VCR cleaning and personal fitness training. Lawrence presented the success story of BizPal and Challenge's Supported Self-Employment Program to the Kennedy family and the rest of the Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. Foundation board of trustees in Washington, D.C., this May.

For more information on the Park Leadership Service program and its other Johnson School MBA volunteer projects, contact Clint Sidle at (607) 255-4104 or ccs7@cornell.edu .

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