Dagenham business founder providing meals for the homeless in Barking

Dagenham resident Ryan Steward set up online wholesaler Prowler Enterprises in January 2021.

Since then, alongside selling supplies for multiple industries, Ryan, his business partner Femi Yusuf and the team at Prowler Enterprises have been giving back to the community and are soon undertaking their biggest event yet.

On March 29, Ryan and his team will be at Scrattons Social Club in Morrison Road, Barking to provide hundreds of meals and free haircuts for those in need.

“We’re now aiming to give out 500 meals minimum,” said Ryan.

“We’ve printed off hundreds of leaflets and we’ve been going to every single homeless man and woman that we can find and handing them a leaflet.

Femi giving out care packages (Image: Ryan Steward)

“We’ve done nothing of this scale yet but we’ve got the resources.

“At the minute we’ve got five barbers and two hairdressers and we’re planning to do at least 500 meals – hopefully we can do the same every two weeks.

“As well as giving out food and haircuts, we want to give out notepads and pens, we want to interact with the homeless and hear their dreams.”

Ryan said his team has so far filled in potholes with flowers, given out care packages to the homeless and did around 50 roof repairs for people aged over 65 in Barking and Dagenham last year.

“We think everyone is struggling now and we just want to help,” said Ryan.

The event will be held at Scrattons Social Club on March 29 (Image: Ryan Steward) Ryan explained that the barbers and hairdressers are all close friends of his and are delighted to be helping out.

“We’re all just coming together and giving back to the community,” he said.

“There’s so much we would like to do still – we’d love to start cutting hair at schools because we know haircuts can be expensive.

“We want to become the biggest and the best at giving back.”

Ryan said that he was surprised at the ease of organising such an event.

“The shop does alright, it sells itself and to be honest I thought it would take a lot more to organise an event like this than what it has taken.

Ryan and Femi have been around the borough filling in potholes with flowers in the past (Image: Ryan Steward) “It annoys me that other companies haven’t done things like this.

“If you have the connections, you can get a venue and food for dirt cheap.”

Ryan’s father’s cousin owns Scrattons Social Club which has allowed Ryan to use it as a base to help those in need.

“We want to use it a lot more going forwards,” he said.

“We’d love to start youth clubs and do things for the elderly – the sky is the limit on what we can do but we’ve just got to let people know what we’re doing.

“We just want to create a space that’s for the people.”