Communidades Organizando el Poder y la Acción Latina (COPAL) is a member-based organization established in 2018 to improve the quality of life of Latine families.

Balqiis Hersi was born in Somalia. Her mom would travel from Somalia to India for work as a designer. In the eighties, her entire family moved to India to escape the Somali Civil War. Growing up there, Balqiis fell in love with the patterns, colors, and prints used in Indian textiles. This love would stay with her and inspire Zizi Boutique.

Peer Pressure Fitness is a dedicated and goal-oriented neighborhood wellness hub that provides clients the necessary amount of motivation and inspiration to reach their targeted fitness and wellness goals. They service clients by optimizing the 8 Dimensions of Wellness while incorporating Minneapolis Culture to create an uplifting space that promotes personal health and community collaboration through Positivity, Energy, Equality, and Respect.

In 1977, MIGIZI was founded as Migizi Communications, Inc. with a goal of countering the misrepresentations and inaccuracies about Native people in the media. In the 1900s MIGIZI found its home base on Lake Street and shifted to focus on serving youth. Most of the students they serve live along bus lines and being on Lake Street makes their programs accessible for their community.

Diamonds Home Health Care at 2740 Minnehaha Ave has been successfully providing Medicaid-certified home care services to the Lake Street community since 2005. This female owned agency has gone great lengths to provide the best service to their clients including protecting confidential patient files, while bullets pierced through the front of their office.

Over the past 10 years, Admas Travel has helped over 50,000 clients travel experiences and memories. On May 30, 2020 Getachew Teklu discovered his business, Admas Travel had been looted and destroyed by fire overnight during the civil unrest in response to George Floyd’s murder. Getachew has not lost hope, he believes his business’ future is still bright and things will get better.

For 7 years, Nicholas Zimet has been operating his acupuncture clinic at the corner of 4th Ave and Lake Street. During this time, Nicholas and his team have focused on providing relief from pain, anxiety, and women’s health issues. They have found strong success with chronic and difficult to treat conditions that have not been resolved with medicine alone.

Midtown Eye Care has served the community as a safety net comprehensive eye care facility that provides eye exams, contact lenses and wide selection of frames and urgent care services.

Elias Usso and his wife opened Seward Pharmacy in late 2019 with the goal to provide better, more personal care to his neighbors compared to what they’d get at large retail pharmacy chains. Less than 6 months after opening, COVID-19 slowed down the new pharmacy. In summer 2020, the civil uprising completely destroyed it, “Everything we had in here was totally destroyed. It was really painful to see it.”

For 10 years, Southside Tattoo has sat quietly on East Lake St as owner Titus McKnight has pursued the one thing that has held his attention since he was younger - drawing and art. Titus is more than charismatic, he’s got a gift for bringing you into the world he’s passionate about and helping you linger and relax.

Milkweed is a community driven cafe that incorporates plant medicine into traditional coffee shop fare to create nourishing, gut-healing elixirs and gluten-free treats. Their ingredients are sourced locally and our syrups and wide array of luscious alternative milks are all made in house.

Despite these major setbacks in 2020 for a small business owner, Guillermina Figueroa Carrillo stays positive for the future of her floral shop, Florería Yare, “We are small businesses but we are big dreamers in order to support our families.”

Tucked away behind dark windows at the corner of Lake Street and 27th Ave, owners John and Midori Flomer quietly made delicious Japanese cuisine for Longfellow residents for over 15 years before Midori’s Floating World Cafe found itself at the epicenter of a fight for racial justice.

When asked what makes Cali Nails special, owner Ngan Hoang answers “It’s more than just a business. Our customers are more than just customers. They have become friends and family to us.”

When Laurel Chapman learned that her brass and woodwind repair shop, Chapman Repair, had flooded with water, she didn’t know what to do - but did know that the damage was more than she could handle as the business's only employee.

After opening Gorditas el Durango in December 2019, owner Manuel Rutiaga faced a lot of adversities that even the most experienced business owners would never see coming. Covid-19 and the civil uprising pushed Manuel to try new methods of serving food to customers and physically protect what he built from being damaged.

On Mostafa Khchich’s first visit to the Midtown Global Market, he thought “Wow! This is what I was looking for!” and he immediately sought out the management’s contact information in hopes of becoming a part of the community there. A few years later, Mostafa had opened Dar Medina and was selling natural, authentic Morrocan goods inside the market.

Holy Trinity Lutheran Church at 2730 E 31st Street has called the Lake Street corridor home for 116 years. Its past and future are deep rooted in open worship, social justice, and affordable housing. Ingrid Rasmussen has been the lead pastor at the church for a mere seven of those years - but more than enough to care deeply about the people and community she serves.

His first-hand experience of being a refugee in the United States with little knowledge of English or American culture led him to start his own business, Amla International Translation, in 1999. Paul saw it as a way to help facilitate and ease the assimilation process for others like himself. Over the past 20 years, he grew the business to work with over 200 consultants and offer translation and interpretation for over 150 languages.

The Lake Street Council grants $2.8 million to 175 businesses and nonprofits that were damaged or gutted in fires and riots.