I've been wanting to chop my curly hair off for for the longest time. But for a specific purpose: to donate it. I just didn't know to who, where, or how to go about. So for one of my classes this past semester, I decided to do a project on hair donation and on hair loss conditions, Alopecia, to be exact.

After hours of research, I found out of a perfect organization that takes in hair donation for children in need of wigs. Locks Of Love is a non-profit organization that helps provide hairpieces to financially disadvantaged children in the U.S. and Canada under the age 21 that suffer from hair loss from any diagnosis. May be from alopecia areata, cancer, victims of severe burns, or children who suffer from other skin disorders that result in permanent hair loss. This organization helps in making and designing wigs specifically for children. Since normal wigs tend to be a little too big for children's heads.

Donations can be made by cutting your hair at your local salon familiar with Locks of Love or by having someone regular cut approximately ten inches and mail it to the desired location on the Locks of Love website. There are certain requirements to be fulfilled when donating hair. For instance, hair that is colored or permed is acceptable, although it can’t be bleached. Hair donating always has to be in a ponytail or braid. If it’s layered it’s acceptable as long as the longest layer is 10 inches. You can certainly donate short hair, but it won’t be used in the hairpiece, it will be sold off which reduces the costs of making a wig.

Why donate to this organization? Children's self-esteem tends to fall down hill because of hair loss. It's the smallest things like hair loss that can ruin one's self esteem because hair has usually always played a huge part of our appearance.

Apart from hair donation, one of the diagnosis that stood out to me when trying to find out about where to donate hair was alopecia.

I knew of a girl who had alopecia in elementary school, except I didn't know she had that at the time. I found out when we later became friends on Facebook. That's when I chose to add this condition to my research project.

Alopecia is an autoimmune disorder that causes hair follicles to shut down because the immune system mistakenly attacks the hair follicles. Both men and women are affected equally. There are many types of alopecia that can cause the hair loss to be permanent in some cases, have no hair at all, have bald spots come and go and so on. Experts don't know why the immune system attacks hair follicles.

While wearing wigs won’t cure alopecia or any other hair loss condition, it can definitely help restore some of the normalcy to their everyday lives. And with the help of Locks of Love they have reached out to many children in need by providing them with hairpieces because most retailers only provide adult size wigs.

One of the best feelings is knowing that by cutting off some of your hair you’re able to help provide for children who suffer from permanent hair loss, and you’re able to put a smile on their face. Even if you don’t know exactly who you’re giving your hair to, just the fact that you are able to help in some way is amazing. In most cases, this helps the child and the person donating. We then realize that sometimes we take things for granted. Like our hair.

I'm also going to add that I'm not stating that because of lack of hair some individuals don't feel beautiful. I'm just saying we can help form a smile on a child or anyone's face with a simple gesture like donating our hair.

Regardless if you do or don't donate, wear wigs or don't, have hair or not, you are absolutely beautiful! One thing I like to keep in mind is that the prettiest thing you can wear is a smile.