The event provided haircuts, hygiene products and a hot meal for Plant City’s community in need
Frontline Community Services teamed up with City Cuts Barber Shop, the Plant City Lion’s Club and Feeding Plant City this past Sunday for their first Haircuts for the Homeless event.
Meeting at the Winter Visitor Center starting at 12 p.m., all those homeless or struggling were welcomed for a free haircut provided by the local barbershop.
The groups also provided a number of hygiene products and then at 5 p.m., Feeding Plant City and volunteers from the Lion’s Club served a hot meal to those in need.
For many involved it was just another day to see the meals handed out as Frontline donates thousands of pounds in food each month and provides a hot meal each and every evening at the visitor’s center, including Thanksgiving and Christmas, as just one of the several services that they provide to their local community.
With just two paid employees and sustained by the help of volunteers and several local groups, Frontline also provides assistance to their in need community by facilitating access to rehabilitation programs. The group does a variety of other services as well like education and scholarship programs, providing assistance to victims of domestic violence, helping find housing, providing COVID vaccines and health services to rural communities, connecting individuals with mental health professionals and more.
“People think that we only have a few homeless in Plant City and that’s so far from the truth,” Jennifer Anderson, head of Frontline Community Services, said. “People go to work with homeless people every day and never know because they have a gym membership and that’s where they take their shower. People go to church and sit in church every day with homeless people and they never know. So what we try to do, we try to fill in those resources.”
In just the past year alone, Frontline worked with Hillsborough County to help over 60 kids receive scholarships, but also assists adults with educational services as well.
Anderson started Frontline three years ago and views the group as missionaries, looking to help those in need throughout Plant City however they can, not limited to just the city’s homeless population.
And for City Cuts, the barbershop actually reached out to Frontline looking to help in any way they can. City Cuts has extended their help in the past by providing free of charge haircuts to children in foster care as well as service veterans and owner Marco Ramirez said they hadn’t yet found a way to help their local homeless community and subsequently reached out.
“My family came from little to nothing,” Ramirez said. “My parents used to pick strawberries and I can remember picking strawberries with them and nobody was really there for us, to help us out. So this is just something that I can do to give back to somebody who needs help.”
Haircuts for the Homeless was just the second event in which Frontline and City Cuts have worked together, but both organizations hope that many more events will happen in the future.
“It’s the message,” Ramirez said. “It’s just the message that you give out that it’s not all about profit, it’s passion. It’s not all about money at the end of the day, we all serve one God. We have to give something back and what could you do better than give someone a smile? That’s what we do it for. I talk to my guys and they’re all passionate, they’re just as passionate as I am. We’re like a family at the barbershop.”
And while COVID has proved a significant financial burden on both individuals and businesses, Anderson says donations have become the biggest challenge for the organization now. As times became harder throughout the global pandemic, many of the monthly donations began to slow.
“We help everybody,” Anderson said. “One thing that we do not allow at Frontline is any kind of hate or any kind of judgement, we will help anyone who comes to our doors. It doesn’t matter your financial status, you could be the poorest person in the world or you could be the richest person in the world. If you need help, if you need anybody, even if you just need prayer you can come to us.”
