Jed Egan/FOR THE POST June Holley, president and founder of ACEnet, poses at Crumb's Bakery, 94 N. Columbus Road, with products from local businesses that her organization has helped get started. ACEnet is a nonprofit organization that assists small businesses founded by low-income citizens.

Editor's note: This is the second article in a five-part series honoring Women's History Week

Women all over the world are making history daily. June Holley, a crusader against poverty, is making a difference, too - right here in Athens.

This energetic woman devotes her talents to fighting poverty in rural Appalachia. In 1984, she and co-founders Marty Zinn and Roger Wilkens developed Worker Owned Network, a nonprofit organization dedicated to small businesses developed by low-income citizens.

WON became the Appalachian Center for Economic Networks in 1991. With an emphasis on worker-owned cooperatives, Holley and the ACEnet team assist people from farmers to entrepreneurs in creating specialty food and computer technology businesses in Appalachian communities.

"Basically what we're trying to do is work with other people in the community to make this economy healthier," Holley said. "We want an economy where people are working together and being creative and where people's gifts are able to be developed."

Holley used her creative gifts to combat poverty long before developing ACEnet.

She credits her parents with giving her a sense of social consciousness, recalling that they always did what they could for people less fortunate than themselves.

Holley, a mother of one, has two master's degrees, including one from Ohio University. In between undergraduate and postgraduate studies, she lived on farms and taught at inner-city high schools in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia. She also worked with a senior citizens center in West Virginia, where she helped to make seniors aware of their eligibility for government aid.

Since then, Holley's efforts have earned her a place in the Ohio Women's Hall of Fame and an invitation to the 1995 United Nations Conference on Women in Beijing, where she presented two workshops.

To share her ideas with a larger audience, she has written more than 25 articles about community economic development. Holley recently wrote her first book, which focuses on business strategies to pull women out of poverty.

"She has a lot of energy, personal energy," said Zinn, co-founder of ACEnet. "She cares about the world and social justice. She wants people to be able to live the kind of life they want to live and have the economic opportunities that everyone should have."

At ACEnet, Holley works to achieve that goal everyday. Some of its greatest success stories are leading businesses in Athens.

Casa Nueva and Cantina, 4 West State St., and Crumbs Bakery, 94 Columbus Road, both started with ACEnet.

To help small businesses such as these, ACEnet developed the Community Kitchen Incubator, a production facility where entrepreneurs rent equipment to make food.

"The facility is equipped with large equipment," said Jeremy Bowman, baker and part owner of Crumbs Bakery. "It has a walk-in refrigerator and freezer. That's very useful to us."