Communities First

For years, Martha Rollins, owner of a thriving antique store in Richmond, VA, was unhappy seeing abundant prosperity in her shop but so much poverty in the distressed neighborhood behind it. The urban community had struggled economically since the “white flight” of the 1960s and was each year filled with more crime, unemployment, and pain.  The need for racial reconciliation, and for uncovering the assets of both the city and the suburbs to bring both together for urban renewal, was clear. The question was how to do it.

Martha’s pastor offered her two precious words of advice. The first was to capitalize on the skills and valuable resource network she possessed as a successful businesswoman. So Martha began dreaming of a furniture restoration business that could offer broken people a chance at renewing their lives. In 2001, one of Martha’s customers donated a houseful of furniture to her and a year later, another offered her $150,000 in a challenge grant to launch a new nonprofit.

The pastor’s second tip to Martha was to identify some partners in the African-American community who shared her passion. In 2001, Rollins’ path crossed Rosa Jiggets’—a prayer warrior and long-time African-American resident of Richmond’s struggling Highland Park neighborhood who was eager to partner. God had now gathered together all the necessary ingredients for birthing what became Boaz & Ruth, Inc.

 

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Since then, this unique social entrepreneurial organization has been hard at work pursuing a threefold mission. First, Boaz & Ruth works with unemployed individuals, primarily ex-offenders referred by the Richmond City Jail. B&R offers these men and women job and life skills training, educational opportunities, and emotional support. Program participants enjoy hands-on employment for at least one year through the small businesses B&R has created to advance the second part of its mission: the economic revitalization of Highland Park. B&R’s anchor business is a 7500-square foot used furniture store. From this start, B&R has spun off eight related earned-income ventures, including a moving company, a furniture restoration business, and a residential junk removal business. Third, just as the historical Boaz and Ruth put aside social, economic, and racial issues to enjoy a rich and fulfilling relationship, so B&R seeks to see all the citizens of Richmond put aside their differences, share resources, work together, and create a better and stronger community. 

“We chose our name—Boaz & Ruth—to remind us of the transforming power of human relationships, both in 400 BC [in Israel] and here today in Richmond, Virginia,” Rollins explains. “We have designed a program of intentional relationships that bridge the gap between those who possess wealth and privilege and those who do not. We believe everyone is a ‘Ruth’ with needs and also a ‘Boaz’ with gifts.”
 
B&R is contributing to its neighborhood’s economic development. It has already created 23 new jobs for north district residents—an impressive achievement in an area where the unemployment rate is triple the state average. And it has facilitated the birth of Highland Park Merchants at Six Points, a nonprofit organization that has joined the Greater Richmond Retail Merchants Association and has held four successful Merchant Days (the most recent one brought out 500 participants).

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Individual transformation, though, is at the deepest core of B&R’s vision. The ministry has recently purchased a 100-year-old condemned house adjacent to the B&R furniture store and has plans to restore it for use as a residential facility. “That house is a physical symbol of how people come to us, locked up, boarded up, decrepit—nobody wants them,” Rollins says. “As we restore it, it’s going to be a living parable. We just have to change our mindsets and see the beauty in people,” she adds. That’s exactly what B&R did for Ruth Cosby. She showed up at B&R in 2003, unemployed, uneducated, and depressed. Within six months, she had sailed through the ministry’s computer training courses and was serving as a “senior apprentice” at the furniture store. Today she serves as the Sales Director at Boaz & Ruth at OAR – a second branch of the original store.