Roberta Carvajal already has the name and the menu already for her catering business. Now she just needs a business plan and the financing to get it started.

Carvajal put herself through culinary school while working full-time as a paraprofessional at DeWitt Clinton High School, and she’s ready to take the next step.

At the second annual Northwest Bronx Economic Development Summit last week, Carvajal met representatives from New York City Business Solutions and Lehman College’s Small Business Development Center, as well as several alternative lending institutions that specialize in helping small businesses.

Carvajal said she had set up a meeting with New York City Small Business Solutions for later in the week and was ready to start her business “tomorrow,” or as soon as she can. Her sisters, an attorney and a business administrator, will be her business partners in her company, which she plans to call “Cucha Catering.”

Other guests at the Economic Development Summit, held at the Bronx Library Center on Kingsbridge Road, were in various stages of developing their businesses.

Meallie Rudd, a retired military officer, has a dream of opening a “unique recreation center,” where young single parents could drop off their children at any hour of the day so they can work.

“I want to know if it’s good to start it here in the Bronx or if it’s better to go to Manhattan, and that’s why I’m here,” Rudd said. “I didn’t know they had so much support for businesses here.”

Kathy Goldstein, who attended the summit with her 9-week-old daughter, Laila, wants to open a children’s consignment store. “There’s none in my neighborhood where I live,” she said. “Kids outgrow clothes very quickly – it’s not cost-effective to buy new clothes.”

At her store, which doesn’t have a name yet, Goldstein would offer parents a chance to buy and sell second-hand clothing, earning a commission from the pieces that are sold. There are two stores like this in Westchester, and parents from the Bronx flock to them on weekends, she said, so a local alternative that’s accessible by public transportation could be very popular. She’s scoping out locations in Riverdale and hasn’t settled on one yet.

Goldstein’s vision for the store would be for it to be a community space, where people can sit and have a cup of coffee and meet other parents. Along with children’s clothing, she plans to sell toys, maternity clothes and parenting books.

“I’m into conservation and recycling, so resale is a nice way to fulfill that,” she said. To help put her plans into action, she attended workshops at the Economic Development Summit and made an appointment with the Lehman Small Business Development Center, where they will help her write a business plan and prepare her to apply for a loan.

While most entrepreneurs at the summit had their eyes on the future, a couple of them were trying to return to the past. Darrel Jones and Wayde Williams set up a display of their indoor, boxed version of Skelly, the old New York City street game where children flip bottle caps between chalk-drawn squares numbered one to 13.

Jones and Williams are marketing the game to schools and institutions throughout the city. “Everyone thinks it started and ended with their generation, but it’s been around for a hundred years,” said Williams.

Roberto Garcia, director of economic development for Mosholu Preservation Corporation (MPC), which organized the event, said the purpose of the summit was to create a forum for business owners, prospective business owners and merchant groups to come together under one umbrella and get information about maintaining or creating a business in the north Bronx.

“The panelists that were put together brought a whole wealth of resources, from the Small Business Administration to the borough president’s office to Citibank and others who know the area and were able to give the attendees valuable information in all the areas we covered,” Garcia said.

The summit was organized by MPC (publisher of the Norwood News) and sponsored by Citibank. The organizations represented at the summit included ACCION New York, a non-profit micro lending organization, Bronx Overall Economic Development Corporation, Bronx Business Alliance, and the Small Business Administration.