Hair Pair Is Building More Than Haircuts and Hairstyles—It’s Building Partnerships

The Hair Pair Project, an initiative of Rob’s Barbershop Community Foundation (RBCF), is designed to create ongoing partnerships between grooming professionals and public schools and agencies serving populations facing barriers to regular grooming services.

RBCF collected data from 36 public schools and agencies participating in Hair Pair. Among them, 74% identified an inability to afford grooming services as the number-one grooming barrier affecting the populations they serve.

Those same organizations identified a lack of funding to hire professional barbers and/or hairstylists as their number-one barrier to providing grooming services.

The need exists on both sides. People need services, schools and agencies want to provide access, and grooming professionals have skills and a desire to serve.

Hair Pair connects them.

From Matches to Partnerships

Through Hair Pair, schools, agencies, and grooming professionals create profiles describing their needs, interests, and what they can offer. The system identifies potential matches that can develop into volunteer, sponsored, contractual, educational, or recurring partnerships.

Master Barber Daniel Wilkerson III describes his experience:

“The Hair Pair app keeps it super simple, from the connections, to the correspondences, a one stop shop for impactful hair care professional relationships with the community, for the community!”

These partnerships can provide more than services. Grooming professionals can build relationships, gain exposure, demonstrate community impact, and create opportunities for future funding and professional growth.

Measuring More Than Haircuts

Hair Pair also emphasizes data collection.

Counting haircuts and hairstyles tells us what was done. RBCF also wants to know what problem existed before the service and what changed afterward.

This allows participants to demonstrate:

Here was the problem.
Here is what we did.
Here is what changed.

That data can later support grants, sponsorships, crowdfunding, awards, media coverage, contracts, and new partnerships.

From Receiving Help to Helping Others

The possibilities are demonstrated through RBCF's Arundel High School Barber & Beauty Salon.

Student Oluwajomiloju “Jomi” Ogunranti entered the project identifying his own lack of grooming knowledge and skills as a barrier. He began receiving instruction, eventually became one of the students operating the salon, and provided 56 haircuts to 14 students and 27 grooming lessons to 21 students. Students receiving his instruction demonstrated an average 27% increase in grooming knowledge.

At just 16, Jomi passed the Maryland State Board examination and became a licensed barber.

His experience demonstrates an important principle:

Someone who needs help today can become part of the solution tomorrow.

Building on 25 Years of Experience

Hair Pair builds upon approximately 25 years of RBCF grooming outreach projects involving 52 public schools, shelters, and social-service agencies and more than 110 grooming professionals.

That experience has taught RBCF who is credible, who is reliable, who is committed, who follows through, and who is a good fit.

Hair Pair provides a way to turn that experience into more connections and more partnerships.

Because ultimately, Hair Pair is about more than providing a haircut or hairstyle.

It’s about connecting people. Building partnerships. Creating possibilities. And making hair care more accessible.