samantha aliban of javalinasSamantha Aliban of JavalinaSilver City MainStreet is acknowledging downtown businesses that have persevered during the COVID pandemic with Downtown Silver City Strong awards. The awards are a way to say thank you to businesses that have worked hard to stay open and find new and creative ways to operate. Silver City MainStreet is grateful that they are located downtown. 

Thanks to a generous donor, Silver City MainStreet is able to give each business owner an award plaque. The latest recipients are The Future Forge, a non-profit, and Javalina Coffee House. Both businesses have faced challenges and have risen to them with perseverance and creativity. 

stephen and mary the future forgeMary Stone and Stephen Lindsey of Future ForgeMary Stone and Stephen Lindsey of the Future Forge state, “It has been difficult for us here at Future Forge Makerspace, being a public educational and recreational facility, we have had to close our doors for the second time this year. Ever since the pandemic began, we have used our facilities to house experimentation with PPE to develop effective and efficient models that would allow us to create equipment as quickly as possible for our medical care providers. 

Beginning in March 2020, the Future Forge Makerspace began to house the production and design for personal protective equipment, in partnership with medical professionals, to be used by medical care providers. As of the beginning of December 2020, we will have made and distributed over 3,000 protective isolation gowns! We have also distributed over 1,500 face shields to medical staff, essential businesses, and community members. Our volunteers continue to push out protective equipment as safely and quickly as possible. 

This summer, after restrictions had lifted slightly, we worked with the Town of Silver City and Silver City MainStreet to coordinate the Makers Market at Main Street Plaza. We successfully created a safe place for local struggling artists to find some sort of profit through these hard times. 

With cases rising so rapidly, we have once again shifted our efforts towards our PPE production. We make face shields, respirators, isolation gowns, and other products that are distributed all over the state. We are hoping that in the near future we will be able to reopen to the public with limited access and necessary safety protocol. 

Samantha Aliban, owner of Javalina Coffee House states, “Challenges we at Javalina’s faced from beginning to now started with laying off all of my staff for almost 3 months from the end of March 2020 until June 2020. I had to adapt to the public health order and in doing so I gathered my staff for a very somber meeting to let them know everyone would be laid off for the next few months not only for their own safety, but for the well being of their families as well, and I would bring everyone I could back in due time. 

I worked 7 days a week from 6 am until 5 pm every day at the coffee shop by myself for months and documented my journey weekly via a Go-Fund-Me I started in order to qualify for a single micro-grant that Go-Fund-Me was providing for small business’. I applied for eleven grants and received a total of three. The grants we were graced with were the Go-Fund-Me Small Business Micro-grant, the Silver City Main Street Loves Local micro-grant, and the Silver City MainStreet Small Business Assistance Loan that was forgiven. We unfortunately did not qualify for other grants that were being processed through the state. 

In order to adapt to the lack of being able to receive other help we received support from the community through several private donations, 5 weekends of donation based bake sales where I baked for 14 hours a day through the weekend, and then selling furniture and plants from Javalina’s to stay afloat. Eventually, we we’re able to bring all the barista’s back to work around mid-June to now.  In order to adapt we socially distanced all of our seating areas, set up a canopy to make our door seating more appeasing, and got ourselves trained and certified through the state with New Mexico Safe Certifications on COVID Safe practices. 

While being NM Safe Certified all barista’s have explicit safety requirements in order to even be at in the building which include but are not limited to wearing a mask throughout the shift, sanitizing every hour, constant hand washing, proper use and disposal of gloves, as well as having their temperature taken before and after their shift. We are constantly adapting to the health and safety practices as they are updated. 

Lastly, to adapt to today’s new world, we added colorful cheer to our coffee shop by painting our own rendition of a New-Mexico-Winter-Wonderland on our windows to bring cheer to the holidays. We have been so incredibly blessed to have the support of so many people in the community that other than safety we bring cheer to the table as well in light of darker times.”  

This holiday season, please remember all the small businesses and support those working so hard to keep downtown and Silver City diverse and vibrant.

Please take all health and safety precautions for yourself and others in our community by wearing a mask and social distancing. Our community health as a whole depends on working together, and small businesses are the lifeblood of the Downtown Silver City economy. We want to make sure they continue to stay successful while maintaining appropriate public health safety measures.

The mission of Silver City MainStreet is "To encourage a vibrant, historic downtown Silver City which is recognized as the heart of our diverse community." Please visit our website, www.silvercitymainstreet.com to learn more.

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