Straight from the streets. (People: making a difference).

Three years ago Danny Leaosavaii and Andy Murnane were living in a garage. Today they are running a business empire. As New Zealand's 60 Minutes TV programme reported, `Life started out tough in South Auckland for Danny Leaosavaii and Andy Murnane. The future was a road to nowhere but when these two hooked up they stumbled into something good.'

Their first company was formed in April 1999 and has now grown to include a retail clothing store, a hairdressing salon, a graphic design business, a recording studio, and a screen printing business. An internet cafe is about to open. Alongside the business elements there is the DawnRaid Community Trust, which aims to train young people.

In the late 1980s Danny was a leader of about 100 young Samoans who got into their `fair share' of trouble. Things went badly wrong in 1990 when Danny and his brother John got into a pub brawl and a man was killed. John was jailed. Danny as the older brother felt responsible. He decided to change his life and went to business school where he met Andy. The unlikely duo, a Palagi (Samoan for European) and Pacific Islander, became best friends.

They shared a love of music and wanted to give aspiring young musicians a chance to record. Their first idea was to make T-shirts--they now make tens of thousands a year and use this to fund other parts of the business development.

The music part of the business, DawnRaid Entertainment, is going from strength to strength in an environment where independent record labels regularly go under. One hip-hop band, the Deceptikonz, has been second in the New Zealand charts and another is in the charts. DawnRaid Entertainment has signed a deal with Universal Records for distribution of DawnRaid albums.

The basic aim of the businesses is to give work and self-esteem to the young men and women in the area. This is perhaps best expressed in the establishment of the DawnRaid Community Trust. It plans to give groups of 15 or 20 a three-month Straight from the Streets Music Programme. They will also be taught budgeting, computer and other skills. At the end of the course an album will be produced to commercial quality. Each participant will have one track on it with an insert of their photo. They will be taught how to market it--with a Straight from the Streets Music Programme cap and T-shirt, to help them sell it.

DawnRaid has no overdraft for the simple reason that the bank, seeing their lack of bricks and mortar assets, decided not to give them one--never mind the fact that their turnover in the year just ended was nearly NZ$1 million. They could see themselves waiting 15 years before they had the money to set up the Community Trust but asked themselves, `What happens to all those kids during those 15 years?' So they scraped together what was needed. When I visited DawnRaid they had not been able to pay for the tables the 15 or 20 young people would sit around for the course, then due to start in a few days.

Andy's father Mike, who helps as a business advisor, expressed some of DawnRaid's basic attitudes in terms of respect for all people. He gave the high quality of the T-shirts as an example. They feel that if they do things right then they will eventually win in the market place. That is their experience to date.