Helping and hair are in Bruce Waight’s blood and the two go hand-in-hand in the way he serves his community.
An award-winning barber, Bruce uses his skills to provide free haircuts for those in need, helping them regain confidence and put a fresh face forward.
In 2019, Bruce founded Rooted at the Homeless Alliance to provide a full-service barber shop at the Homeless Alliance’s Day Shelter. Staffed entirely by volunteers, the barber shop is designed like any other, allowing its clients to have a sense of normalcy and dignity.
“I was always volunteering at the Homeless Alliance shelter,” Waight said. “I had a mobile barbershop unit called En Root I just bring out when I do volunteer events, back-to-school events and things like that. It was just a way to give back with what we have. Once I opened up my brick-and-mortar shop, it was kind of hard for me to get down there so I decided I will try to do something different. So we opened up a permanent, volunteer-based barber shop within the Day Shelter there at the Homeless Alliance.”
Bruce spent much of his time researching, talking with experts and gathering volunteers for the shop and to set it up for success. Intent and execution were important to Bruce as he made the decision to open Rooted on the Homeless Alliance campus.
“Some years ago, my dad passed away and I found out that for a while he was homeless,” Waight said. “We didn’t know—the family didn’t know. I was already volunteering at the Homeless Alliance so I can’t say that really inspired me because I was already there, but I just wanted to give back and I feel like that demographic is often left out. I just felt like it was a great way to give back but I didn’t want to be one of those guys that you see that cut hair under a bridge or something like that, and I didn’t want to feel like I was exploiting people, so I went to the experts to get the advice on how and what would be the best way to volunteer and help people properly, you know, so that was the main thing for me. I just wanted to make sure I was doing it right and not inappropriate with that demographic.”
Bruce retired En Root in 2021 after serving hundreds of individuals, children, and families and positioned Rooted, 3515 N. Classen Blvd., to open full-time. As the shop got busier, Waight transitioned to doing more community-based work.
“Initially, I was responsible for getting volunteers down there,” Waight said. “I worked with different barber schools, different business owners to get volunteers down to the shop. Of course, me and my staff would go and volunteer. They developed a really great system where volunteers can sign up online, so I actually recently donated the barber shop to the Homeless Alliance and kind of took a step back from it. They’ve built a really great system, and I was trying to focus on my other projects. It’s grown so much that I just didn’t really feel like, beyond myself, just volunteers is what is really needed. So I just donated it to them, gave him all my contacts. As far as I know, it’s going pretty well.”
That step back allowed Bruce and his wife Vanessa to put more focus on another project they founded. Cut It Forward is a nonprofit dedicated to providing culturally-specific hair and skin care resources for foster and adopted children of color and their caregivers.
Rooted hosts Oklahoma’s first Artist in Residency Barbershop program, a myriad of community events and continues Bruce’s mission of paying it forward.
“We do so much here. We have a boys’ group home called Speck that we see once a month, and they get bussed into our shop. We’re able to see anywhere from 20 to 30 young young men, we give them cuts.”
Bruce’s personal history remains a catalyst in his desire to give back and contribute positive things to his community. He wants to give people experiences they wouldn’t otherwise have.
“If you don’t really know about that, I grew up with that, in that world,” Waight said. “A lot of us don’t even realize that that’s a thing and sometimes these children are left out of what most of us might consider a normal thing that’s going on in our lives. I feel like a haircut is part of that, where parents can come and bring their children, it’s just a whole experience being in the barber shop. It’s really sad that there’s a whole group of young people out there that may not ever really get to experience that growing up, so we try to make an effort to make sure that we reach those children so that they have a sense of normalcy. And that was the same thing with the shelter. That was a reason why, with the barber shop inside of the shelter, that was a reason why I didn’t just set up a tent or something outside of camping grounds or something, I didn’t want to do that, because I felt like everybody deserves to have this type of experience in their life. So that’s why I decided to take a step further and actually build a barber shop inside of the shelter, because it’s like a real barber shop and so they get to have that experience. And that was the biggest feedback we would get from a lot of clients is that it had been years since they stepped inside of a barber shop and it just felt really good. You know, so that’s the main thing that I try to do, is give an opportunity for those who may not be able to have these experiences.”
Bruce encourages others to find ways to give back in more ways than just opening their pocketbook.
“There was a quote I read once that was like, ‘If you don’t have the money to give, but you have a skill, you should give your skill away,’ so that’s how I’ve always felt. I wasn’t always in a position to give but I’ve always been in a position to give my skill away. I just feel like that’s important. Sometimes we feel like, ‘Well, if I can’t write a check, then I guess I just won’t do anything.’ But, you know, there’s something you could be doing to give back. So I was just struck, that was always a pain in my heart. My family said I had been like that since I was a little boy, but I just think it’s important to get that.”
