Cancer doesn’t stand a chance!
By Ifda Taj, Junior Reporter and Dhara Modi, Senior Reporter
Cancer patients go through a lot in their life from losing their hair to having a battle between life and death. During chemotherapy, they lose their hair and this affects them severely, far from how much we can even imagine. Breast cancer is also one of the leading diseases found in women and around one in eight women have the risk of ending up with breast cancer.
The Protect Your Mom Campaign is a campaign that has been founded by Mrs. Premi Mathew, a woman of substance and determination, with the main purpose of spreading awareness about Breast Cancer. Her mission is to beat breast cancer with pester power. Pester power is a unique ability possessed only by children through which they can pester their mothers to conduct self checks each month.
The campaign itself aims to spread knowledge about breast cancer, its symptoms and how women must learn to effectively prevent it by conducting self-examinations every month, so that early signs can be detected and quick action can be taken.
The campaign harnesses the creativity of young minds by encouraging them to organize events in their respective schools, create posters, videos, sketches or any form of artwork which helps to convey the message efficiently.
Hair for Hope India is a sister campaign which is also founded by Mrs.Premi Mathew and it initiates the need to donate hair and convert them into wigs for financially unstable cancer patients in India.
Protect Your Mom and Hair for Hope India have zero to minimal costs as they have been established through the help of social media platforms, digital communication and word of mouth. These are community success stories that have gained popularity in UAE as well as across all states in India.
Many students from The Indian High School, Dubai have generously donated their hair and have also managed to coordinate and organize awareness and charity events, dance performances, shoot videos and sketch amazing art for the campaign. We talked to students of IHS who successfully donated their hair to cancer patients.
Aparna of 9F says “I feel proud and content getting to replace that dearth for them.”
When asked if they were hesitant earlier or regrets it now, Kalyani says that she was ‘thrilled and excited’. Aparna says, “I had heard about many campaigns regarding this and as I frequently cut my hair, me and my mom thought why not instead of feeding it to the dustbin, give it to someone who’ll find it useful? Hair for hope is a campaign in India with institutions all over the country. Many salons in my area were providing free haircuts to girls who wanted to volunteer for the cause.”
For Meenakshi Ajith of 9F, an ambassador of the Protect Your Mom campaign, it wasn’t this easy though, “I had to grow my hair for a year to get it the right length.” When she went to get it cut, Meenakshi says, “Salons in our area were unaware about this and we had to personally train and teach them about it.” When asked about people’s reaction, she says, “You see, Indians love the beauty of long hair; many were surprised to see me have cut my long hair and were upset too. “Aparna says that her relatives felt that the haircut didn’t suit her well but were proud of her initiative. “Honestly, now I like this style and I feel much stronger as a girl.” All of them say that we should note one things that hair ‘grows’, they might go today but grow back healthier tomorrow, but for some people, it’s unfortunate that this is not the case and we are sure that our act has made someone somewhere happy today.
V.Swathi of 11 COM B was also brave enough to donate a significant length of her hair for the cause through Hair for Hope India. Swathi says, “Even though the main reason for me was a change of hairstyle, I felt that my hair shouldn’t end up in the bin when it can be used for a specific purpose”.
Kalyani shares with us some conditions for donating hair –Hair mustn’t be chemically treated, it must be 15 inches minimum, Shampooed and dried before cutting, and preferably plaited with a hair band tied above 15 inches. Friends Of Cancer Patients (FOCP) is an organization working for a similar cause in Sharjah, UAE. They accept hair for donation to be made into wigs that’s distributed to cancer patients who’ve lost their hair during chemotherapy.
The PYM campaign and Hair for Hope India have indeed provided a lot of hope and inspiration to hundreds of lives battling with cancer.
Visit www.protectyourmom.asia to make a difference!
About the reporters:
Ifda Taj is a Junior Reporter for the Light House, currently studying in Grade 10 of the Indian High School.
Dhara Modi is a Senior Reporter of the Light House and is currently in Grade 11.