PANORAMA CITY : Vendors to Receive Business Lessons

Nearly two dozen tenants of a Blythe Street apartment building met with a handful of administrators and instructors from Mission College on Tuesday to finalize the schedule for an entrepreneurial training program designed to make their work safer and more profitable.

Most of the tenants who gathered on folding chairs in the building’s cramped common room are immigrants from Puebla, Mexico, who sell cooked corn from street carts for a living.

The vendors listened intently as representatives from the college described the English, business and culinary arts courses slated to begin Monday.

Reyna Salas, 27, the only woman in the group, said she and her husband support their four children by selling corn.

“I am happy,” Salas said through a translator. “I want to learn to speak to people in English without any problems.”

With a $250,000 grant from the Industry and Commercial Development Department of the city of Los Angeles, the vendors will attend two-hour courses five days a week for the next year either at their apartment building in the 14700 block of Blythe Street or a nearby location.

One of the goals of the program is to locate a communal kitchen where vendors can meet sanitation and health regulations. Many of the vendors had been cooking in their apartment building until fire, health and building and safety officials cited them for hazardous conditions last month.

Penny Young, the director of the business and professional center at Mission College, initiated the pilot training program in November after discussing community concerns at a meeting of the Blythe Street Impact Team.

Juan Ramon Escobar, 37, a training supervisor at Price Pfister and a part-time instructor at Mission College, will teach the vendors the fundamentals of operating a business. Escobar, who immigrated to this country from Chile 10 years ago, said he can relate to the struggles the vendors face. Teaching the course, he said, is his way of supporting their efforts.

“They will find out how to function and how to be successful,” Escobar said. “That’s what America is all about.”