Stories of Resiliency: Uplifting Community Enterprises in Los Angeles
By: Lisc La
Tags: Small Business, Grant, Community Impact, Financial Aid, La Covid Fund

The LA Regional COVID-19 Recovery Fund has provided a much-needed wave of financial relief and recovery tools for small businesses, non-profits providing essential services, immigrant-owned enterprises and the most vulnerable Angelenos impacted by the pandemic. Serving as the Fund Administrator, LISC LA has awarded grants to over 1,000 businesses. Each week, we’ll be sharing the stories of our resilient grant recipients.

As the holidays draw to a close, LISC LA is grateful to have had the opportunity to work with the City and County in giving crucial grants to local businesses and non-profits. Since March, the pandemic has fundamentally changed the way we live and work. On top of the public health crisis, the lockdowns and operating restrictions in effect across the city and county have made running a business a daily struggle. Some were able to transition their services online and develop protocols to meet new safety standards, but with less revenue coming in and bills piling up, Angelenos needed economic relief. A number of financial relief programs were created to address the needs of local businesses, but unfortunately, the many cultural, technical and financial barriers in receiving this aid have caused many businesses to fall through the cracks.

To support the small businesses that form the backbone of the diverse Los Angeles community, the City and County created the nearly $100 million LA Regional COVID-19 Recovery Fund to provide $5,000 to $75,000 grants to small businesses, microentrepreneurs and non-profits. With over 40 years of experience connecting communities to resources and opportunities, LISC LA ensured grants were distributed equitably and reached the most vulnerable Angelenos.

OLASTEO in South LA and the Wizard of Art in Los Feliz are two recipients of the LA Regional COVID-19 Recovery Fund who have contributed much to their communities.

For OLASTEO, they believe creating empowering experiences for students can serve as a catalyst for social change. The non-profit serves the Watts community in South Los Angeles, inspiring students to expand their world view and give back to their communities. Aaron Friedman, President and co-founder of OLASTEO, has spent the last five years curating interactive workshops, immersive trips, and powerful speakers for their youth scholars. Given the challenges of COVID-19, Friedman worked to expand their virtual programming through their very first OLASTEO Speaker Series.

Friedman says the LA Regional COVID-19 Recovery Fund grant OLASTEO received will help fund the series for the next nine months, featuring ten impactful speakers for the community. The grant additionally helped them fund their recent Summer Virtual Experience, a two-day event with virtual guest-speakers and educational sessions. Now, the grant is supporting their operations and marketing efforts to directly expand their organization’s presence in Los Angeles. As a newer organization in South Los Angeles, the grant gives OLASTEO and Friedman hope that major grantmakers will recognize their dedicated work in the community — starting with the successes following their LA Regional COVID-19 Fund grant.

“We are a relatively new organization with huge dreams and aspirations — thinking globally and acting locally,” said Friedman. “Years from now, when we’ve impacted hundreds, perhaps thousands of students, funded in significant part by grant money, we will never forget the one grant that got it all started.”

This week’s second featured recipient, The Wizard of Art, is a family owned art school that teaches personalized drawing and painting lessons to students of all ages and abilities. The school is a fixture in the Los Feliz community, having been in the same location for 24 years and oftentimes instructing the same students over decades. They enroll students ages 4 to 104 (yes, you read that right), and one of their current instructors even started off at the school as a student many years ago. The owners, husband and wife Paul Eventoff and Donna Zweig, are talented, trained artists who have been praised in the LA Times for their work and versatility. When COVID-19 hit, in-person classes for the school had to be cancelled, leading to a drop in enrollment and uncertainties on how they would pay for business expenses.

When Eventoff and Zweig learned they had received a grant through the LA Regional COVID-19 Recovery Fund, they were finally able to pay their rent and ensure that they would remain in their Los Feliz home. Now, the school is offering virtual art classes over Zoom and rebuilding their enrollment with the joy of providing a magical, creative space for their students and Eventoff and Zweig hope to reopen The Wizard of Art’s doors soon.

“This grant has been a godsend,” Eventoff said. “We are so grateful to continue offering art classes to the community in any way we can.”

While the Fund’s final round of its grant program is now closed, LISC LA continues to build resilient and inclusive communities for people, places and businesses through a number of programs they offer throughout the year. To learn more about LISC LA and the programs they offer, visit https://www.lisc.org/los-angeles/.