What do you do when in this tough financial climate you become unemployed?
For Ann Charles, the answer was very clear. No way was she prepared to sit at home waddling in self-pity, waiting for a handout or vegetating on the “shoulda, coulda, woulda”.
Instead, after “Sunshine”, as she prefers to be called, was let go from her job as a bus driver at the Transport Board in 2011, she was on the lookout for any type of work she could find.
She sold vegetables from the back of her vehicle, drove limousines as well as trucks, and did all kinds of odd jobs just to support herself and pay bills.
Last October, while browsing the Internet in search of more efforts to elevate herself as usual, she stopped upon an idea which then morphed into a new business called Sunshine Smiles.
Charles explained to the DAILY NATION that on that day, while bored and wanting something to do, she happened upon a do-it-yourself technique of creating handwoven items made from gift-wrapping paper and newspapers.
Grand take-off
Among her designs and creations using this technique were egg baskets, jewellery boxes and gift baskets. She revealed that in mere weeks, Sunshine’s Sunshine Smiles had taken off beyond belief.
“I started it and I realised I was fairly good at it. I needed a job anyways, so why not see if I can take something that is pleasing to the eye that other people would like and who would want to buy; so that is what I did.
“I started to sell [in October] at the side of the road anywhere, mostly to friends and people I know,” she said, noting that people were mostly blown away by the quality of her creations due to the fact that they were made from newspapers.
In the past couple of months, “Sunshine” has been able to grow her designs exponentially, fashioning all types of shapes and designs as she adapted to the varied requests of her growing clientele.
‘Try something’
For those unemployed people at home feeling hopeless, the Six Roads, St Philip-based entrepreneur’s advice is to try something but don’t just sit at home and vegetate.
“Try something. I’ve sold okras and eggplants – try something because you still got to eat, you still got to live. I know it is hard because initially I was making like one sale a week; seriously, it was horrible.
“My face started to change because I thought this wasn’t working, but what I noticed at the places I went was that people like to eat so I started putting biscuits in them and people began buying, especially men. They started buying for their kids.
“So if you can find out what the people want, then that is something that you can work with. For me I am going to go with this as far as I can,” she said. (SDB Media)
