MIDLAND, Texas — Casandra Santillan is the the owner of Santillan's Barber and Beauty Studio.
"When I first got this shop, it was actually named Casandra's but then I was like, I want it to be more family like my family. I want my kids to see it and be like 'that's our shop' and my husband to be like 'that's our shop,' so I wanted it to be more family," says Santillan.
Most of her clientele are families and she wanted to be able to offer a free service to kids and families in the community who may need it. She started reaching out to local organizations to see how she could help.
"I wanted to reach out to the organizations because that's what there for, is to help people and I wanted to see in what other ways I could help them," says Santillan, she goes on to say, "what I've been doing is reaching out privately to other artist to see who want to team up with me, what days can they offer so I can try to get more kids taken care of," she says.
During the back to school cuts, she will be opening her shop up for seven days a week and not closing until the last kid is out.
"People take something as little as a haircut for granted and something as little as a haircut is so much more to somebody else and to see their reactions to the haircut, that means I know they want to look right they want to look good and it means so much more," says Santillan.
By making her clients feel good and look good, she says she always enjoyed about her job. Which is another reason why she got into the barbering business.
"So my grandma had cancer. She would always have me play with her hair and do her make up and stuff and so she gets so happy when she had her wigs and stuff," says Santillan.
The same happiness it brought her grandma is what she hopes she can bring to others with these services.
She also has no plans of stopping even once school starts up.
"I mean it can just be something as little as reaching out to a client or reaching out to a family in need, just you as an individual not even a business or anything like that just giving back in general or just reaching out."