As Toronto deals with a higher level of youth unemployment, a barbershop and a community organization in Scarborough partnered to host an event to support job-seekers in the city’s east end.
During a mid-day Black History Month event co-hosted by the Scarborough Environmental Association at Conrad’s Barber Shop and Hairstyling, barbers offered no-cost haircuts to prospective workers. After the haircut, all of the job-seekers had the opportunity to get a series of professional portraits by a photographer.
Conrad Marshall, who joined the full-service barbershop in 1987 after his father opened the business 12 years earlier, said he wanted to participate as a thank you to the community for decades of support.
“What I like the most is dealing with the people, the camaraderie with the people — some of my best friends I’ve met at the barbershop,” he said. “Without the support from the community, we wouldn’t be around right now.”
Brandon Mwendo, a photographer with Hydeout Creative Studios and a videographer with 6Ception, said he lives in Scarborough but didn’t have a chance to visit Conrad’s in the past. He said he’s been looking for a way to give back to the community, and this event offered the opportunity to put his skills to work.
“I mean if I tried to think of how many places are doing this right now, making it easy, I can’t think of one,” Mwendo said, noting bigger cities like Toronto don’t always have easy opportunities to build local connections.
“I’m really happy that we’re able to do this during this month and give everybody a fair shot. As a photographer, even getting a studio for myself doesn’t work for everybody’s budget, so I can only imagine how many people are just not looking into this at all because of those barriers,” he added.
Mwendo said having a professionally shot portrait can positively boost one’s online presence and potentially make a difference from a self-esteem perspective.
“Whenever I show them the work, their expression changes. Their whole feeling changes, especially if they really love it,” he said. “I feel like it really boosts their confidence, and they have this photo now that they can go forth and start applying to places.”
“They’re not feeling as worried to apply to places because their profile might not look so good or what have you. But yeah, I hope it just boosts people’s confidence a little bit to get out there,” he added.
Wayne Virgo is one of the residents who took advantage of the offer. The Toronto resident, who is mainly looking for human resources or administration-related jobs and has a background in transportation, described the current job market as “pretty brutal” and hoped he could also network.
“I’ve been revising my resumes over and over again, going to job agencies, asking friends, connecting with old networks. Like, it’s ridiculous to say the least,” Virgo said.
After getting a taper and a trim, he was appreciative of the set of photos he received.
“Feel confident overall … I really like them, like, fresh, crisp, professional, amazing,” Virgo said.
Krissan Veerasingam, a director with the Scarborough Environmental Association, said despite the organization’s name and the initial connotation it might bring up, the group focuses on building up social environments.
“It’s also the community you’re from, and barbershops are a big part of the community. They supply so [many] employment opportunities for youth. Conrad’s has been here for over 50 years, so it’s sort of a natural fit for us to do this event,” he said.
“It’s the first Black-owned barbershop in Scarborough and that means for decades it’s been providing job opportunities and community for the local population, and that is such an important thing,” he added. “We’re trying to highlight not just the negative stories of the racism, the discrimination that the Black community faces, but how they’re overcoming that and Conrad’s is like the perfect sort of symbol of that.”
Veerasingam said with younger people having a harder time finding jobs, the event is one way to try to “equal the playing field” for those who live in Scarborough.
“In Toronto, youth unemployment is at 20 per cent and if it’s 20 per cent in Toronto, it’s much worse in Scarboroughjust because of racism and employment discrimination as it exists,” he said. “We want to see not just Conrad’s providing these opportunities, but also the government has to step up and provide these opportunities as well, because it’s such a systemic issue.”
Another part of Marshall’s involvement is a broader effort to attract more people into the barbering trade.
“What we want to do is to set an example for the young people growing up — the youth, the Black youth — to show them that they can also have a business that’s open for more than 50 years, and show them that they could also have multiple locations like we do,” Marshall said.
To attract more people to the field, he and others at the shop said they have worked on putting together an educational and mentorship program. Michelle Herbert helped develop that program.
“We want to make sure that all the youth start off on the right foot. We want to get them certified, we want to make sure they’re following health and safety protocol, we want to make sure that they know how to manage their business — all of that falls under education and that’s something that’s been missing from this trade for a long time,” she said, adding they also focus on the whole business operation such as accounting and marketing.
“We built our own learning centre. We teach right in the barbershops. We don’t interrupt the individual’s schedule, meaning their work schedule. They take their lunch, they go to class, then they go right back to cutting hair and it works for everyone.”
For anyone looking for a possible new career, Herbert said barbering and hairstyling have multiple benefits for people with different backgrounds.
“People don’t really understand the amount of cash flow that flows through a barber shop because they think of the trades sometimes … a bit of low class or middle class, but that’s really not the case. A lot of the money in terms of hairstyling globally right now. It’s about a $13-billion business,” she said. “So the interrelated careers, we bridge all of that in our educational model. So when people come in and say, ‘I want to learn about barbering,’ I say, ‘Well, did you know that you can actually just learn how to design tools?”
“There’s a new form of clippers coming out now. We have clippers that are all battery-operated. We didn’t have that 20 years ago,” she explained. “And we’re looking for youth to come and say, ‘OK, let’s use our minds and think 20 years from now, what do we want our clippers to look like? What do we want our chairs to look like? What do we want our scissors to look like?’”
For anyone with questions or an interest in more information, Marshall invited people to call the business at 416-428-5025.
