St. Paul Academy senior raises more than $35K to help minority-owned businesses damaged in unrest

For Rolando Borja, who moved to Minneapolis from Mexico 30 years ago, it’s a gut-wrenching sight: Behind a chain-link fence, his Lake Street office is buried under twisted metal and crushed stone.

“It’s really sad to see this destruction,” Borja said. “The reality check when you get here and see it’s really gone, it’s hard to swallow.”

His agency, Integrated Staffing Solutions, was destroyed during the riots after the death of George Floyd.

Borja went down to take a look early on the morning of May 29th.

“Our CFO called me crying, telling me the business was fired, that it was gone,” Borja said. “Buildings were still smoking, and everything was trashed.”

In another part of town, 17-year-old Alek Radsan was deeply affected by Floyd’s death — and how minority businesses were being impacted.

“I felt a real feeling of sadness,” he said. “When businesses like this were destroyed, it destroys the mechanisms of wealth creation for minority communities. I wanted to do whatever I could to help.”

So Alek, an incoming senior at St. Paul Academy, created a GoFundMe page to help minority-owned business damaged by looting and fire. He launched the page launched on May 28 and has raised more than $35,000 so far.

"When I started this, I wanted to do some research, to figure out which organizations, businesses, would do a good job in overseeing the money,” Alek says. “And MEDA, with its history, with its track record, was a very good recipient of that money."

Word about the fundraising spread quickly. That included people at the Metropolitan Economic Development Association, or MEDA for short.

"We’re a non-profit and a community development financial institution. Our mission is to help minority business entrepreneurs succeed,” said Alfredo Martel, MEDA’s CEO. “We quickly went online and discovered this remarkable young man had taken upon himself to create a GoFundMe page on behalf of our organization.”

Martel says Alek’s donation will pay for 400 hours of business consulting, lending services, and pro-bono legal work.

"What we just see is difficult,” he explains. “It’s difficult to see because our clients have lost everything."

That includes Borja, a long-time client. He says MEDA helped him to secure a $230,000 paycheck protection loan from the Small Business Administration.

He’s thankful for the association and for people like Alek, who are stepping forward to help.

“There’s no words to say thank you to this guy, just with doing what he did," Borja said. “That helps out to continue paying my employees, continue my payroll intact, and continue doing business at home."

Borja acknowledges he and his 17 employees face a long road ahead.

Working. Rebuilding. Getting his business going again.

And for Borja, like many, there is still the pandemic to consider. He says he fears other Lake Street businesses won’t be so lucky and that they may never come back.

“I would like to stay in this neighborhood. I love this neighborhood,” he said. “But I don’t know, we’ll see what happens in the future.”

Both Borja and Martel say they’re grateful for Alek’s donation.

“We’re all focused on eradicating economic disparities,” Martel says. “We feel that helping minority entrepreneurs rebuild, retool, to succeed is what we do for a living. Alek’s gesture heals us, so we can help folks like Rolando.”

Alek says he knows the $35,000 isn’t a huge amount, but he hopes it will make a difference.

"It’s really sad what took place here,” he said. “Very depressing scenes. Whatever I could do, I tried to make a mark, tried to make some change.”