Boston Businesses among Winners of LISC & Verizon's Nationwide Small Business Grants

4.30.2020 — LISC StoriesEconomic Opportunity

This week, 225 small business owners struggling to stay afloat in underinvested communities across America will be receiving $10,000 grants, thanks to a partnership between LISC and Verizon. Boston businesses are among the winners who applied to the nationwide fund. These critical funds will work to keep enterprises up and running in the face of devastating economic pressure caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, helping business owners pay wages, rent and other immediate operational costs.

Nikia Londy runs Intriguing Hair in Hyde Park which she established in 2013, creating wigs and extensions, including for people with medical hair loss who travel from far and wide to visit her shop. Shortly after the new year, supplies shipping from China stopped coming. Londy has received a $10,000 that will help with payroll and operations expenses.

April Teixeira is owner of the Corny Bread Company which she founded in Dorchester, MA. Her signature dish is cornbread that she often sells to customers with a dose of corny humor. Like many food-based businesses, Teixeira found her spaces for making and selling her cornbread like her community kitchen and local farmers markets are closed due to COVID-19. She founded the 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 $10,000 grant is a welcomed lifeline.

The grants are helping these and other small business owners throughout the Commonwealth and the country to stay afloat.

Like Londy and Teixeira, all the grant recipients run enterprises that are beloved in their communities and contribute in important ways to their local economies.

For the full story featuring winners across the country, click here.