38 DECEMBER 1 - DECEMBER 7, 2017 BROOKLYN MEDIA GROUP
5th Ave Hair Studio hosts event
to celebrate women, benefit CHiPS
Local resident gives back through
annual holiday gift card drive for teens
BY MEAGHAN MCGOLDRICK
MMCGOLDRICK@BROOKLYNREPORTER.COM
This Giving Tuesday, local
resident Sara Steinweiss was
doing what she does best – collecting
for those in need.
Steinweiss, a former New Utrecht
High School teacher and longtime
community activist, is in the midst
of her seventh annual gift card
drive for teenagers in foster care,
for which she started collecting donations
around Thanksgiving.
“I started the event seven years
ago,” Steinweiss told this paper. “It
was around the time that I had
retired from teaching, and I’d been
working with teenagers for so many
years that I just knew, on that level,
what happens around the holidays.”
Oftentimes, she said, teens in need
get the short end of the stick when it
comes to holiday drives.
“You know, everyone does toy
drives, but a lot of the time, the teens
are really left out,” she said. “So I
spoke to a few of my friends and said,
‘Let’s get some gift cards.’”
Today, the drive — which typically
brings in over $1,000 worth of cards
— is a force to be reckoned with.
Steinweiss works closely with
MercyFirst, the organization that
once operated out of the storied,
now-shuttered Angel Guardian
Home in Dyker Heights, but, still in
operation today, serves more than
200 teenagers in foster homes.
Popular donations, she said, include
gift cards to CVS, Walgreens, Dunkin
Donuts and even the movies. “Anywhere
teenagers would shop,” she said.
To date, the drive has brought
in over $10,000 in gift cards, all of
which run the gamut.
Steinweiss is accepting donations
via mail through December 10. Those
interested in participating can mail
their gift card or cards to Steinweiss
at P.O. Box 40229, Brooklyn, NY 11204.
She plans to bring the donations to
MercyFirst on December 15 – just in
time for the holidays.
“I’m grateful that everyone continues
to be a part of this because it’s a
simple act like this that can change
the way a teenager feels about themselves,”
she said, “even just for one
day.”
BY MEAGHAN MCGOLDRICK
MMCGOLDRICK@BROOKLYNREPORTER.COM
5th Ave Hair Studio hosted
friends, family and most of all,
women on Thursday, November
16 at special event dubbed “Women for
Women.”
The event – which featured networking,
hors d'oeuvres and even a
wine raffle – served as a fundraiser
for CHiPS, a facility in Park Slope that
doubles as a soup kitchen and a shelter
for women in need.
Since 1971, CHiPS – headed today
by Denise Scaravella – has been supported
by a community of Brooklyn
neighbors, volunteers and friends
who share a common vision to help
those who are less fortunate. On
premises, they prepare hot, nutritious
meals and serve them to the hungry
while also housing up to seven women
in their last trimester of pregnancies
(and their newborns for up to a year)
as well as two older women in need.
“This is a beautiful event,” said
Scaravella, calling 5th Ave Hair Studio
owner and founder Nina Grullon a
friend to all of her clients. Particularly
special, Scaravella told this paper, is
her friendship with Grullon, which
she said is all thanks to Star Network.
"What's really special is that we met
at the 2016 Power Women in Business
Awards," she said, adding that, there,
she and Grullon were both honored.
"It was at that event, which in itself was
about honoring women, that we got to
meet."
The event, hosted by Star Network
in conjunction with The Home Reporter
and Brooklyn Spectator, annually
honors influential Brooklyn women
whose major achievements and dedication
to the borough have inspired
others.
"That has trickled down," Scaravella
said, "and now my organization is
benefiting from her salon and her
kindness."
At "Women for Women," Scaravella
told the packed studio of her work at
CHiPS and what the facility means to
women far and wide.
“My organization is just a beautiful
organization,” she said, adding that it
was given to her to run by the Franciscan
Sisters of the Poor. “It has a lot
of long arms.”
Its first arm,
she said, is a soup
kitchen that feeds
about 350 people a
day, almost entirely at the hands of
volunteers (many of them from Bay
Ridge). Its other, she said, is the shelter
upstairs that serves as a place of love,
safety and refuge for women who are
in a bad place so that they don’t “go into
the system, or stay in a bad relationship
or compromise themselves.
“We offer that safe, friendly apartment
so that these women can take
care of themselves and their baby,”
she said.
“Women for Women” also served
as a celebration of the hair studio,
at home at 9013 Fifth Avenue, being
named the best salon in the borough
in this year’s Dime Best of Brooklyn
competition.
Both Scaravella and Grullon are
thankful for the event's many sponsors,
including McGovern's Wines &
Liquors, Harbor Fitness of Bay Ridge,
Bake Ridge Bagels, though Scaravella
is especially thankful to Grullon.
"It was a beautiful event and a wonderful
honor," she said.
BROOKLYN MEDIA GROUP/Photos by Arthur de Gaeta
Scenes from the CHiPS fundraiser held at the
Fifth Avenue Hair Salon.