Rosa, a single mother of two young children, was depressed and at her wits end. She had barely been surviving on her government Mother's Allowance benefit, when her financial roof caved in. Her youngest child had fallen seriously ill and required numerous costly treatments. (Happily, the child eventually recovered from the illness.) Unfortunately, Rosa's debt-load and day-to-day expenses were becoming far too much for her to bear. This had not always been the case for up until six months before, Rosa had been employed as an assembly line seamstress until she was laid-off after the plant's closure.

Since the layoff Rosa had actively searched for employment but owing to her limited job experience and low formal education, the only job options seemed to be minimum wage. Rosa would have gladly worked at any job just to get back on her feet. However, a minimum-wage job would not cover childcare expenses and pay the bills, let alone the medical debt. Rosa's situation was further compounded by the fact that she had no immediate family to help her.

After seeing our self-esteem television show, she decided that her past was not going to equal her future. She immediately took out a piece of paper and started to write down her various assets. After analyzing her current situation from a different perspective, she decided to contact the local university to see if any student would be willing to baby-sit the children part-time in trade for free accommodation. One of Rosa's assets was the three-bedroom apartment that she rented. The children could share one room, which would free up the third room for someone else. After meeting several interested students she finally settled on a second year, Early Childhood Education student, who jumped at the opportunity of reducing her costs. Rosa was now in a position to once again seek employment.

She found a part-time job as a seamstress at a department store. The pay was a bit higher than minimum wage and she did not have childcare costs. Rosa quickly learned how to measure people's new garments to make final alterations after the purchase. After working several months, Rosa got the idea to approach various small clothing shops that lacked an alteration service. She would demonstrate the correct method of measuring garments to the retail staff; then, at the end of each day she would collect the garments from various retail clients, do the alterations on her own home machine and return them two business days later. Within several months the business was growing and people were asking Rosa to do sewing repairs as well.

It got to the point that Rosa simply could not keep up with the workload so she contacted some of her former co-workers, most of whom jumped at the opportunity to work part-time on a piecemeal basis for Rosa. She then went to the receiver that handled the closing of the plant who happily sold her five industrial sewing machines at an unbelievably low price. Rosa supplied each of the women with a sewing machine, for which she charged a monthly usage fee, enabling her to pay off her loans.

Within a short period of time Rosa had more than tripled her former monthly wage plus she had the added bonus of reducing her taxable income with the various costs of doing business. She had also improved the lives of five of her friends.

One night, her student boarder lamented that she wished someone would design a stronger, more affordable student backpack, one that would outlast the cheap nylon version that kept ripping under the strain of her third-year textbooks. Rosa, once again, saw and seized the opportunity. She and the student designed several backpacks made of spare denim material that was lying around. The resulting backpack was durable, fashionable and very inexpensive to produce. The backpacks sold very well at the university bookstore and at several city outlets that catered to the student market.

The net monies earned from the backpack venture did not make Rosa rich, or place her into early retirement. It did, however, give her a way out of a seemingly desperate existence, restore her sense of self-respect and help pay off her medical debt in less than four months!