Cash puts East End women on hairdressing career path
A HAIRDRESSING salon on a housing estate in London’s deprived East End is giving unemployed women a chance to train for a career after landing an �8,000 award from a Docklands charity trust. The salon on Poplar’s Teviot Estate has received cash to run evening and weekend training sessions
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A HAIRDRESSING salon on a housing estate in London's deprived East End is giving unemployed women a chance to train for a career after landing an �8,000 award from a Docklands charity trust.
The Annissy 'unisex' salon on Poplar's Teviot Estate has received cash from the Isle of Dogs Community Fund to run evening and weekend sessions to train women as qualified hairdressers.
"We have a lot of interest from youngsters who don't have the skills or confidence but want to go into hairdressing," said Crissy Townsend from the Teviot Action Group which runs the salon.
"We tell them they can do this. We're residents ourselves who've done this, so they can also do it."
Her salon has 17 trainees currently working for recognised qualifications, including Albanian immigrants Flora Vorfi and Entela Haderaj who joined three years ago after being unable to get jobs.
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Flora recalled: "We lost our confidence because we didn't speak English at all. But Crissy helped us a lot and now we can do everything without shaking!"
The grant, from contributions by Poplar's Housing and Regeneration agency, is being used to bring the premises up to scratch with a new boiler, lighting and specially-lowered basins for disabled customers. The salon now wants to extend training to beauty therapy.
