![]() To a person, the Verizon-LISC grantees have their eyes on surviving in the present, and building stability for the future. The Verizon LISC grant will help owner Orlando Burns pay business expenses for the next four months. The Barber Suite in Chicago, in pre-pandemic days. DeShanta Black of Humble Beginnings Boutique in Pennington, AL has transferred the sewing skills that got her started in the fashion business to making face masks she sells and donates to residents in her small, rural town. The owners of Honduras Kitchen, a family-run Central American restaurant with locations in Huntington Park and Long Beach, CA, give away free meals to all takers every day from 10 to 11 a.m. In the onslaught of the Covid-19 pandemic, many grantees have adapted their businesses to help with the surrounding community’s needs. ![]() That led to a 75 percent drop in revenue.” Londy had applied to multiple sources for support, including federal stimulus programs, with no luck and had to lay off one of her employees, whom she describes as “like family.” The grant, she says, “is the light at the end of the tunnel.” On top of that, “many of my clients have compromised immune systems, so they weren’t coming to the store on the advice of their doctors. We’re very proud to support them and of our partnership with Verizon. The first 225 grantees are an incredible group of urban and rural entrepreneurs. Thanks for talking with me about the #SmallBizRecovery fund. Shortly after the new year, supplies shipping from China stopped coming. Nikia Londy runs Intriguing Hair in Boston, MA, creating wigs and extensions, including for people with medical hair loss who travel from far and wide to visit her shop. Some felt the pinch as early as January, when international supply chains were first disrupted by the virus. Like Burns and Teixeira, all the grant recipients run enterprises that are beloved in their communities and contribute in important ways to their local economies. This grant gives me hope that I can get through this.” “We often don’t have much to fall back on. “This has hit minority businesses very hard,” she says. This was going to be my year.” But the community commercial kitchen where she bakes has closed, and the farmers markets and other outlets, like weekly breakfasts at WeWork spaces, where she sold her breads, are all on hiatus, too. “The beginning of March was my best month ever. For every viewer who tweets #payitforwardlive and shouts out a favorite small business, Verizon kicks in an extra $10 to the fund.įor April Teixeira, who founded her Dorchester, MA-based business, the Corny Bread Company at a turning point in her life-she was divorcing and had lost a job in education-the pandemic hit just as her company was beginning to show robust profits. The series has welcomed viewers into the living rooms of the likes of Alicia Keys, Billy Eilish and Dave Matthews for intimate performances, and of the titans of online gaming. The fund has gotten an extra push from Verizon’s twice weekly Pay It Forward Live entertainment streams, which will continue through May. ![]() These are entrepreneurs who have had few avenues to capital from mainstream markets.īy clicking Subscribe you are opting in to receive emails from Local Initiatives Support Corporation Ninety percent of all the entrepreneurs are under stay-at-home orders in their communities, and a full 87 percent live and do businesse in places that are designated economically distressed. In this first round of grantees, 96 percent are minority business owners, 62 percent are women, and 12 percent are veterans. A survey just published by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that 40 percent of small businesses have had to lay off staff and most are financially fragile, with barely enough reserves to cover a month’s expenses or less. Within days of posting the application for the first round of grant funding, LISC received 55,000 responses-an overwhelming testament to the profound need among small business owners in every corner of America. This grant means we’ll be able to pay essential bills for at least the next four months, and shift some of our business into online sales.” “Nobody is prepared for a prolonged pandemic. Burns has been honing his hairdressing skills since he was in middle school, but as a businessman, he explains, he wasn’t financially equipped to weather an indefinite closure of his shop. “This means the world to me,” says Orlando Burns, owner and head barber at the Barber Suite in Chicago’s Bronzeville neighborhood and a grant recipient.
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