Otumoetai College students shave hair for cancer

Olivia Nightingale, 14, looks just like any other teenage girl. Except for her number two buzz cut.

Gritting her teeth and laughing through her tears, Olivia, the only girl in a group of 37, shaved off most of her hair last Thursday in Tauranga to fundraise for Shave for a Cure.

Along with Olivia, around 25 boys from Otumoetai College – including a couple of teachers – had their heads shaved, with the rest opting to wax their legs next week as part of the fundraising event for Leukaemia and Blood Cancer New Zealand (LBC).

“I’ve been really self-centred all last year, and so worried about how I looked,” says Olivia. “Then I had the thought that every little girl wants to be able to dress up and look nice and do her hair. I kind of thought: what about the girls that have cancer and they don’t have hair?

“I just wanted to commend the little girls that don’t have hair and go on with their lives and are beautiful anyway, and also show my support to families who have suffered from cancer, who know the devastation it can cause.”

Olivia surpassed her goal of $500 in donations and reached around $560. This amount, according to the Shave for a Cure website, can fund “an education meeting to ensure patients have access to information about their condition and can meet other patients going through a similar experience:.

Amidst cheers of encouragement, Olivia bravely waved a handful of ponytails at the crowd. “I reached up and touched my head for the first time and I’m just like ‘oh my gosh, it’s too late now.’

“I felt so honoured and I felt like I had done something that I was allowed to be proud of,” she says. “I’d finally done something that was relevant and meant something.”

LBC receives no government funding, so relies on donations and the efforts of ‘shavees’ such as Olivia.