By David Toro Escobar |
Guatemala City (EFE) .
“This Bike-Barbershop is a project designed for the streets of Guatemala and seeks to provide free haircuts to whoever needs it,” José Kchaire, a 34-year-old barbershop instructor who goes from street to street on his particular tricycle, told EFE.
On a hot morning this week, José, better known as “Pepe Barbero”, parked his vehicle under the shade of some trees in the center of the Guatemalan capital, before setting up his barbershop chair and treating anyone who needed it for free.
“A barber is someone who is designed to serve others. A haircut can change your appearance and that influences your self-esteem and projection towards others”, indicates José, who has been dedicated to this profession for more than twelve years.
Suddenly, the traveling barber receives Jorge, an artisan who becomes his first client of the day, while they share a chat. In return, “Pepe Barbero” leaves him shiny and with a new style.
The entrepreneur’s particular tricycle draws the attention of hundreds of office workers, bricklayers and merchants who pass through the sector daily and who, for a couple of seconds, stop to observe the peculiar mobile barbershop.
an ecological project
“The Pepe Barbero bike-barbershop” has an “ecological” concept that is easy to move from one point to another, explains its creator.
José assures that he got the idea from a Spanish barber who travels the streets of his country on a bicycle. However, the original idea in Spain is a lucrative business and the project started in Guatemala aims to maintain “an altruistic essence.”
For a country where almost 60% of the population lives below the poverty line and 15% try to survive on less than a dollar a day, a free haircut can save three or four dollars.
Meanwhile, Kchaire combines his altruistic work with directing a training academy for young people seeking to start the trade as barbers.
Seeks to expand the initiative in Guatemala
The adaptation of the bicycle to turn it into a “mobile barbershop” took a lot of ironwork and was the second that Kchaire modified in this regard.
The entrepreneur’s idea is to find a second volunteer barber, who will take one of the bicycles and join the concept of sharing a free haircut in Guatemala City and its surroundings.
For “Pepe Barbero”, it is “small actions” that can help Guatemalans overcome economic hardships, he affirms, while he collects the hair that was left lying on the street to clean the space used.