Women's Org. Issues First Loans

NEW YORK (AP) -- Count-me-in, an organization set up earlier this year to raise money for women entrepreneurs, on Wednesday issued its first small business loans following a national fund-raising drive.

Those selected for funding were Kristy Eaton, 29, of Piedmont, S.C., who makes and sells cakes; Geneva Francais, 64, of Atlanta, who sells meat marinade sauces and salad dressings from her home; and Heather McCartney, 34, of New York City, who produces cookies and cookie cutters based on traditional African symbols.

"More than anything, what this says to me is that if women all work together, we really can solve our problems together," said Nell Merlino, a founder of Count-me-in for Women's Economic Independence. She also started the Take Our Daughters to Work Day with the Ms. Foundation.

She added: "What we're really seeing here is a dramatic change. Women are looking to themselves to get things going."

Merlino and Iris Burnett, a former executive of USA Networks, last May launched www.count-me-in.org, a Web site that gathers donations as small as $5. The money is used to provide "microcredit" loans ranging from $500 to $10,000 to small businesses run by women.

Merlino said Wednesday that the group already has raised a little over $1 million from contributions that have averaged $15 each. The group's goal, she said, is $8 million, making possible some 2,000 small business loans.

Eaton, who is divorced and has two children, got into the cake business when "her mother's car broke down and the mechanic wanted a cake as payment," Count-me-in said. She plans to use the $3,500 she was loaned to move her operations into a rental building and buy more equipment so she can expand production.

Francais, a widow who lives on Social Security, sells sauces and salad dressings from her kitchen. With her $1,500 loan, she hopes to build storage shelves in her kitchen so she can start selling her homemade products to gourmet shops in Atlanta.

McCartney wants to expand her Ethnic Edibles business, which makes cookies shaped like African masks, drums and dolls. She will use the $5,000 loan toward packaging and marketing.