Last year, Ebony Barber Shop was falling apart. The floors were rotting and the ceiling tiles threatened to fall on the heads of customers.
Northwestern’s Lending for Evanston and Northwestern Development program allowed Ebony’s owners make the shop fit for business again.
LEND, a new undergraduate student group, provides grants and workshops to help owners of small businesses such as Ebony. The group has so far helped rebuild Ebony and establish Yawaa African Market and Natural Products, a health food market in Skokie.
“This is geared toward people who live in West Evanston with full-time jobs who are thinking about starting a business but don’t know the legal or marketing logistics,” said Rory O’Byrne, a Weinberg junior and co-president of the group.
Businesses can apply for $1,500 loans from LEND, O’Byrne said. The organization then provides the business with an account manager to walk the borrower through how to budget the money and collect repayments once a month. It also requires members to attend an eight-week business training workshop, where O’Byrne and other members teach the basics of writing a business plan.
“It’s a very nurturing relationship, something a bank couldn’t afford,” O’Byrne said.
Two NU students who graduated last year helped O’Byrne and co-president Weinberg senior Jesse Wiener come up with the idea, O’Byrne said. The eight current members come from a range of majors, although most are in the Mathematical Methods in the Social Sciences program.
“After going for walks west of the tracks we realized the enormous economic disparity in Evanston,” O’Byrne said. “We live in a bubble at Northwestern.”
LEND helped ease Yawaa’s transition to a new building, owner Sharona Walker said. Walker started the business a few years ago, and moved to its current location in Skokie in June.
“It’s a phenomenal support system,” Walker said.
A member of LEND approached Walker while she was selling her natural cosmetics, soaps and other products at a farmers market. Once she applied and was accepted to the program, members helped her create a budget and successfully market her products.
“For me, personally, it wasn’t so much about the loan but about the knowledge,” Walker said.
Two businesses participated in the program last year, but the group hopes to have 10 to 12 participants this year, O’Byrne said. Although the money is limited – it comes from alumni and faculty donations, a grant from Associated Student Government and a prize for winning the Northwestern Venture Challenge – O’Byrne said he does not anticipate any challenges in receiving more funding.
Donors tend to like this program because they find it more sustainable than other similar programs, O’Byrne said. Rather than just dropping money in a neighborhood, this organization works to build relationships.
“There’s been a very favorable response from alumni,” O’Byrne said. “A lot are acutely aware of the economic divide in Evanston, particularly those who live in Evanston now, so this tends to be a cause they can relate with.”
Bridgette Giles, owner of Ebony, said the program helped her to write a business plan. Giles’ father started the barbershop in 1962, and Giles took over the shop last year and began restoring it. She found out about LEND through the Evanston Community Development Corps.
“I’ve had clients who stopped coming to me because the shop was getting kind of raggedy,” Giles said.
Those clients all came back once the shop was restored, she added.
