A ten-year-old girl from Aberdeenshire has raised more than £2,000 for charity by shaving her head.
Molly Gowans-Ouvray, a primary 7 pupil at Auchenblae Primary School, had her hair cut off yesterday in front of all her classmates to raise the money for Cancer Research UK.
She said: “My cousin Jack shaved his head for fun and I thought that looked cool and scary, and my mum was talking about how one of her friends, Coreen, had cancer and had lost her hair, so I decided to shave mine. I wanted to make people more aware of cancer and what it can do to you, and to show that its not just adults that get it, it’s kids too.”
An incredible 21 inches of hair was cut, and will now be sent away and made into a wig for a child who has lost their hair to cancer.
Mum Elaine Gowans said: “I’m incredibly proud of her. We’ve had long discussions about it back at the beginning of the year and we thought about doing it before the summer but we wanted to make sure she was ready for it because people are going to respond to her differently now. She really wanted to raise awareness of cancer and the importance of how precious life is and that’s what she’s done.”
Molly’s hair was tied into 22 bunches and several classmates got the opportunity to cut a bunch off.
“It was a bit odd,” she said.
“Everyone wanted to cut a bit off and I didn’t know who to choose. I could hear the scissors going ‘crunch’ through my hair. There’s two little girls who cut their hair really short and they gave it to the Little Princess Trust to make wigs, so they got to cut a bit off.”
The youngsters has smashed her initial fundraising target of £1,000 and hopes to continue raising as much money as she can.
She said: “It feels amazing. The money’s going to make a massive difference, and I’ve done the best I can do.”
To contribute to Molly’s fundraising effort visit www.justgiving.com/MollyGowansOuvray