Community Hair Project is doing incredible things in the Australian hair landscape. With the initiative growing even further, we spoke to founder Christine Mastello about their amazing work, how you can get involved and why you should.
How did Community Hair Project start?
Community Hair Project is under the umbrella of Southlakes Incorporated, which was established almost a decade ago as a food bank and community support organisation. There was a mum who would come in and get food packages for her and her kids, and she shared with me that her three sons weren’t going to get their school photos taken because she couldn’t afford to get their hair cut for the photos, and she didn’t want her sons to look back and realise they were poor! This resonated with me because I also am a sole parent and have three sons. I got on the phone and organised for a local hairdresser to kindly donate their time to give these boys a cut, to look their best for their photos. Southlakes Inc. paid for their school photos as well.
From this moment I worked with the committee of Southlakes Incorporated to develop this idea of connecting volunteer hairdressers and barbers with people who are doing it tough, who are homeless or who are rebuilding their lives after family violence. CHP does all the leg work coordinating the volunteers and working with agencies and organisations like homeless shelters and community organisations that host CHP and our clients. We provide capes, shirts and public liability to all our amazing partnered hairdressers and barbers
We started out in 2017 with eight hairdressers at six venues in the Hunter and Central Coast regions of NSW. We now have 200 volunteers, servicing 170 venues in four states, and have provided 47,000 free haircuts to women, men and children who are doing it tough and really benefit from a little bit of care, pampering and a hug.
What does the initiative do in the community?
We never wanted to be just a free haircut! It was important to us from the outset that we partner with government and non-government agencies and provide haircuts in their buildings, and partner with services that provide free meal services for our homeless mates in parks. We are only there with the person for 30 minutes giving them a haircut but it is extremely important to us to know that they have a support system around them after we leave. This is another reason why we go back to each site every week or month or quarterly, as based on the centre, which chooses how often we provide free haircuts because they know their clients. We like making and keeping connections. A few of the agencies we provide free haircuts to also include Compass Housing, Headspace, St Vinnies, Salvo’s, ADRA and Youth Of the Streets.
How can hairdressers be involved with it and why should they contribute?
There are 3 ways to get involved. One, volunteer your time for a few hours every week, month or every 3 months, whenever you can give up a few hours for Community Hair Project. We will arrange an event for you to go in your local area, you let us know how far you are happy to travel, to cut hair and make people who really need it feel really special.
The second way to hop on board is to hold a Salon Experience. Close your salon to the public for four hours and we arrange for a local domestic violence refuge or homeless shelter to book their clients in for a haircut, or maybe a colour or blow dry. We work with a local cafe and organise light refreshments and we have gifts sent to your salon for you to give to the clients after their free haircut.
Thirdly we understand a lot of people are time poor so we have Community Hair Project collection tins that you can pop in your salon. All money collected goes into purchasing our shirts, capes and toiletry packs that we give out for free. We are a registered charity so all donations over $2 are tax deductible.
One of the things that all our partnered hairdressers talk about is that they enjoy making our clients feel good, to boost their confidence. Every person has the right to feel good about themselves. We see it at every event, the people we give free haircuts to, walk away not only with a fresh haircut, they walk away with a bit more of a spring in their step and a smile on their face – they know that someone cares about them and that someone cares enough to volunteer their time to help them feel good about themselves. What gets me every time is when one of the people we are giving a haircut to turns to me and says, “Really, you guys aren’t getting paid to be here today?” So many of the people we work with can’t believe that a perfect stranger cares enough about them to come out and cut their hair for free.
We take the time to get to know our partnered hairdressers. If your passion is working with the homeless then we will set up cutting hair for the homeless, if your passion lays with working with domestic violence survivors then we will organise for you to visit a local Women’s Refuge once a month. It is very important to CHP that our partnered hairdressers and barbers get a nice fuzzy feeling after every event. We provide our partnered hairdressers with our logo shirt and cape and more importantly gifts to hand out to everyone they cut hair for.
What’s next for Community Hair Project?
We are so excited to be launching two new projects this year. Indigenous Hair Workshop will see two or three of our partnered hairdressers travel to remote Indigenous communities in Australia and stay for five days. We will teach basic hairdressing and barbering skills and general haircare to three to five Indigenous locals. On the fifth day we will hold a CHP event and invite the whole community. Our partnered hairdressers and students will work side by side cutting hair for free. Each participant will receive a free hairdressing kit with everything they need to look after the hair care needs of their community.
Our second project is DOTTIE. She is our Iveco Van that is currently being fitted out as a mobile hair salon. We cannot wait to hit the streets with her. We will continue to give free haircuts but it will be so good to really pamper our homeless mates, women in DV refuges, families and seniors struggling financially. Our goal is a free mobile hair salon in every state of Australia.
For more information contact communityhairproject@gmail.com
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