UM class helps women realize their entrepreneurial dreams

Mary Henry isn’t ashamed of her past as an alcoholic.

In fact, she’s using it to pursue an entrepreneurial dream.

The Lamoine native moved back to Maine about a dozen years ago, met her husband and started a family, putting years of substance abuse behind her.

So when she aspired to start her own small business, Henry, now 50, didn’t stray far from personal experience.

“I thought ‘why not draw from my own background?'” she said. “I’ve had first-hand experience with [substance] abuse for 20 years.”

Henry has plans to build a non-clinical transitional home for young women recovering from substance abuse – a sanctuary tucked amid several acres of blueberry fields that she and her husband own in Lamoine.

Her business plan for the transitional home was one of many on display in Ellsworth on Thursday at the Hancock County office of the University of Maine Cooperative Extension.

Henry was recognized with 14 other Hancock County women as recent graduates of the New Ventures course offered by Women, Work & Community, a statewide nonprofit organization.

The 12-week course provides women numerous resources and networking opportunities to “reach for their next goal in life,” said Glenon Friedmann, the Hancock County coordinator for Women, Work & Community.

“So many of these women have had dreams percolating in the back of their minds,” Friedmann said. “And they either pursue it now or go wondering what might have been.”

Many of the women felt the course was just the boost they needed to get their dream off the ground.

“There is so much potential for small business in Maine, but a lot of people enter into it without all the facts,” said Ginger Manna, 47, of Orland, whose specialty is handmade bags and purses from a variety of colorful fabrics and materials. “I had no idea about all the legal and financial aspects of business and this course was invaluable in that regard.”

Manna, a former teacher, has been a craft artist for many years on a small scale. Now that her two daughters, 10 and 13, are getting older, her vision has grown.

With help from the New Ventures course, Manna will open her own store, Bella Colore, in Blue Hill later this month.

The store will feature Manna’s own handmade creations, along with items from many other local artists, including several she met through the New Ventures course.

“I am so fortunate to have met all of these women,” she said. “To know that we’re all going through the same thing allows us to provide so much support and encouragement to one another.”

The graduates joined together Thursday to be recognized and to share their business plans, which were as varied as the women themselves. The ideas ranged from landscape photography to gardening to organically grown beef.

Some plans, like Manna’s, already have come to fruition, while other would-be businesswomen still have a lot of work to do.

Mary Henry is still in the beginning stages of her transitional home, but hopes to have it up and running by 2008.

Henry’s husband, David Henry, a pastor at the Lamoine Baptist Church for 22 years, said he is “appropriately scared to death” about his wife’s business ventures, but she said he has been wholly supportive.

She recently received word that Sea Coast Mission, a nonprofit group out of Bar Harbor, has agreed to sponsor her endeavor until she can get her own status. Until then, she admitted she’ll be “knocking on a lot of doors.”

As she moves forward, Mary Henry knows her past won’t be too far from her mind.

“Being able to talk to and help others who are going through the same things that you have gone through – that’s the magic,” she said.