"Beauty Starts Hair": Embracing, Educating, Empowering

When living in a small town with a predominantly all-white environment, it is sometimes challenging for persons of African descent to fully embrace their identity when there is little to zero representation. Therefore, this project aims to highlight and increase the visibility of Black students both at St. Francis Xavier University and within the Antigonish community. We will attain this mainly through hair dressing and barbershop - services that aren’t specifically available for ‘Black’ hair in Antigonish. Through the year’s we’ve spent here at StFX, we have embraced the opportunity to provide hair services to students and persons of African descent. For this project we will continue to do this by showcasing these services to the StFX and Antigonish communities, while expanding the knowledge of the beauty of expressing ourselves through our
hair and the benefits reaped by protecting and taking care of it. Moreover, as our time is winding down here in Antigonish NS (both in our final year at StFX), we plan to mentor with the skills of ‘Black’ barbering and hair dressing, to ensure a continuum of Black hair services in this community after we have graduated from StFX. It is our ultimate hope that the Black community within this town, will continue to exhibit a strong sense of pride and empowerment, and that
persons from all races and backgrounds would have received adequate knowledge on the beauty of Black hair and cultural expression.