Get a haircut, help a child.
This Sunday (Jan. 27), the proceeds of all haircuts at Vermelho Hair in Canmore (705 10th St., next to Communitea Cafe) will go to a Nepal-based volunteer organization. Lauren Taylor, a hairstylist with Vermelho, is spearheading the event.
The monies raised will be donated to the Nepal Volunteers Council (NVC), a non-governmental organization based in Kathmandu which helps provided housing, education and other need to impoverished youth in that country.
Taylor went to Nepal in October 2011 to volunteer at an orphanage run by NVC and plans on returning this March.
“I’ve been raising money for the last couple of months to bring over with me,” said Taylor. “I’m trying to bring as much as I can, so they can buy all their school supplies, and they’re working on building their own school.
“They work with a couple of orphanages as well – that’s what I did – and the money they received from their volunteers helps give them food and clothes and medical care, and sends them to school. They offer scholarships as well, for kids to go to primary school and high school. And that provides them with their uniform, school supplies and everything, and if they succeed, there are scholarships to go to university in Kathmandu.”
For the fundraiser, Vermelho is accepting cash only. As the charity is based entirely outside of Canada, tax receipts are not available.
“The money that we raise from that will all go to the orphanage,” said Taylor. “They’ll pay the same amount for a haircut, but instead of the salon taking the money, it’ll all go to the charity.
“Also on that day Buff – the company that makes neck warmers – they’re donating a bunch of stuff to sell for the fundraiser as well.”
From her own experience, Taylor can attest to the fact that Nepal is an incredibly impoverished country.
“It’s a pretty poor country, one of the poorest in the world,” she said. “All the schools there aren’t free, you have to pay to go to school, and there’s lots of organizations that offer free schools for kids, but a lot of them have poor quality because the teachers aren’t being paid.
“With Nepal Volunteers Council, they don’t have a ton of schools, but they try to provide the kids with a good education and a well-qualified teacher.”
When Taylor was there in 2011, her volunteer work focused on helping orphaned boys.
“Last time I was there I worked at one of the orphanages – the one I was at had six boys,” she said. “We would help them with their schoolwork, teach them things about Canada and play with them, and we’d be there for them.
“The orphanage was just the lower level of a house that someone’s donated.”
The boys, ranging in age from 12 to 16, were orphaned during the insurgency about 10 years ago.
“There are a lot of kids who don’t get to go to school in Nepal and most of them only go up to maybe Grade 4,” she said. “A lot of girls don’t get to go to school at all, so they help girls and boys, as many as they can.”
Taylor decided to support Nepal because she wanted to volunteer in a place where she could trek as well, and she went with NVC after finding positive information about it online.
“I was looking at a lot of different organizations online – there were some that seemed really shifty – and I found them through a website that works with these smaller organizations,” she said. “The Nepal Volunteers Council is run by three Nepali men, the president’s name is Keshab, and he was a principal at a wealthy private school.
“He quit that and started Nepal Volunteers Council – he saw firsthand what children needed – with two teachers that he worked with. He started with offering scholarships and that got the ball rolling.”
“I had to go in really trusting that they were legit. As soon as they picked me up at the airport it all came together.”
Since October, Taylor has raised about $1,500 for the cause.
“My goal is to give them as much as I can,” she said.
