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.