ST PAUL, Minn. — You’ve seen plenty of stories about barber shops, most of them focused on what’s taking place up top.
But Milan Dennie’s barbershop is notable for the parade of kids heading downstairs.
“The first thing we do when we start a business is we have to come up with an idea,” Milan, standing at the front of the room, instructs a small group of teens intently listening.
Four days a week after school, the teens sit at tables, classroom style, in the basement of King Milan's Barbershop.
Call it the students’ MBA-BB program: Milan’s Business Academy in a Barbershop Basement.
The real name Milan chose for his youth programming is simpler and more broadly focused. "It’s Our Neighborhood," is Milan’s gift to the community.
“I always reflect on what I had to go through,” the 42-year-old barber says.
Milan grew up poor, with two old siblings in Gary, Indiana,
“My father passed when I was 7,” Milan explains. “So, I grew up without a father.”
Milan’s mother was often sick. “She was born with polio,” he says.
With challenges at home, Milan made some bad choices.
“I ended up getting in the judicial system as a teenager, getting in trouble and stuff like that,” he says.
By the time Milan reached the age of the students he’s now teaching, he was in juvenile detention.
A license to barber proved to Milan’s his path to redemption.
“At the age of 22, I opened my first barbershop,” he says.
For the first time, Milan experienced the feeling of being an owner. A friend convinced him to open a shop on University Avenue in St. Paul.
Boarded stores stand near his shop. He wanted to be in a neighborhood with challenges.
He wanted to make things better.
Milan wanted young people to know the feeling he knew, the feeling of being an owner.
“We are going to go over the business plan,” Milan tells his afterschool students.
Tamea Greenhill is among the teens learning — free of charge — entrepreneurship, web design and multimedia.
My brother and my stepdad get their hair cut here and I just seen the flier on the door,” she says. “It's just fun to interact with children our age, stay out of trouble, you know.”
Tamea and other students produce products they sell several times a year at a Rosedale Center business fair.
Then, each Friday afternoon, they play chess.
“It teaches you to be patient. It teaches you to think before you make decisions,” Milan says.
Alex Spitzer is among the volunteer instructors who prepare Milan’s students for chess tournaments – and life.
Ninth-grader Ace Kimmons calls the barbershop basement classroom a blessing. “I want to go to college,” he says. “I want to do business.”
The students are also learning about community service.
Milan encourages them to participate in trash pick-ups he organizes.
He also leads by example.
Each fall, the day before school starts, Milan and his other barbers give free haircuts to children.
“Last year we did about 200 kids,” he says.
Every kid who comes in for a haircut also leaves with a backpack full of school supplies.
On the street in front of the barbershop, Milan’s students serve Polish sausages from a food trailer.
Today, the sausages are free. On regular days, the students work in the food trailer to earn money for themselves and their educational programs.
“It's all youth ran, all young entrepreneurs run it,” Tamea says as she serves sausages with all the trimmings.
Milan used grant money to buy the food trailer, another way, he says, for students to learn business skills while earning some money during summer months and on weekends.
But why does he do it; this one-time juvenile delinquent, turned mentor.
“To me, it feels like I am them, in a sense,” he says of his students. “I see myself when I see them.”
Milan Dennie, taking care of business — and his neighborhood.
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