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Former LA gang members offered a new beginning

In Los Angeles, a corporation that runs several small businesses is demonstrating that the training and discipline of working in a small company can make a big contribution to changing the lives of former gang members.

The corporation, Homeboy Industries, runs a silkscreen business, for example, that produced revenue of US$1.1 million last year from sales of custom T-shirts and other apparel for radio stations running promotions and college and private groups holding events. The business employs former gang members to make the T-shirts and uses the money to help offset the corporation's expenses.

Homeboy Silkscreen started 12 years ago in a converted warehouse under a freeway overpass near downtown Los Angeles and now has 18 employees.

Homeboy Bakery has a new plant that has US$3 million in ovens and machinery and its managers hope to produce millions of dollars in revenue within a year or two, said the master baker, Alvaro Ocegueda. He supervises 25 former gang members who have become bakers under his guidance and with professional training at Los Angeles Trade-Technical College, a two-year community college.

There is also a Homegirl Cafe, which has a staff of 27 girls who were "gang impacted" either as auxiliary gang members or as residents of neighborhoods under gang influence. The cafe has brought in more than US$220,000 in five months of serving breakfast and lunch six days a week, said Patricia Zarate, who cooks for and manages the business.

Homeboy Maintenance takes in about US$6,000 a month and a Homeboy store sold US$25,000 in Homeboy shirts and caps in a three-month period.

Though it may sound like a budding conglomerate, Homeboy is a nonprofit charitable corporation that last year had a budget of US$5 million and goals that emphasize rehabilitation over revenue.

"The aim of the cash-producing businesses is that they bring in enough to pay for the free services," said Reverend Gregory Boyle, a Jesuit priest who founded Homeboy Industries in East Los Angeles two decades ago and is now its executive director.

Those services include mental therapy for former gang members, housing assistance, job development counseling and tattoo removal treatments.

The tattoo removals are not a fashion statement but a safety concern. Tattoos are a marker of the rivalries among the 26,000 members of Los Angeles' 250 gangs, the Los Angeles Police Department said.
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