September 18, 2008 | Read Time: 2 minutes
Six years before Najah Aziz made the leap from her corporate career to begin full-time work as a hair stylist, she completed cosmetology school, where she participated in a class assignment to give free hair care to teenage girls at a juvenile-detention center. The experience left an impression that would become the inspiration for her salon’s commitment to community service.
“How they received getting their hair done changed their whole attitude, helping them to feel better about themselves,” says Ms. Aziz. “I saw how that meant so much to them, and said that if I ever open my own salon, I would incorporate community-service work.”
Within three months of the April opening of her Like the River Salon, in Atlanta, Ms. Aziz made good on her dream of using her shop to provide hair-care services that enhance the style and self-esteem of local women. She arranged for 20 women from the Atlanta Day Shelter for Women and Children to be picked up in a stretch limousine and shuttled to the shop, where they received about $2,000 worth of hair-care services, including shampoos and haircuts.
“These were women running from domestic abuse, drugs, lost their job, things like that,” said Ms. Aziz. “They were just ecstatic.”
Customers usually pay $35 to $95 each for cuts and other services, but the shelter’s clients were treated to the pampering at no charge. The salon plans to offer free hair care to needy women every quarter.
Ms. Aziz, whose mother is a breast-cancer survivor, hopes to hold a future event to serve women who have suffered hair loss due to radiation and chemotherapy. “We’re going to do a wig day, cutting wigs and styling,” she says.
Here, a young woman from the shelter gets dried off in preparation for a haircut.
