Cambodia Children’s Fund and Hair Aid

CCF recently partnered with the Australian based charity, Hair Aid, to provide CCF community members with hair cutting training #changinglivesonehaircutatatime A team of professional hairdressers from Australia taught a five day crash course to 25 community members in Steung Meanchey. ​Five days, five cuts and dozens of happy customers.

Five basic hair cuts were taught in the course and the trainees were not short of live models to practice on. What began with a few brave volunteers, soon turned in to long lines of people waiting excitedly to receive a new hairdo.
The course is designed to empower people: “Hair Aid gives back, it celebrates the art of hairdressing and passes our passion on to people. It teaches them tangible skills so that they can go out and start a micro business to support themselves and their families, feed their kids and sustain themselves. It is powerful to be able to do that, to help people and do it in the right way,” said Tabatha Coffey, a Hair Aid volunteer who shot to fame on the U.S. reality television show Shear Genius.
The course will have a lasting impact on the community and Hair Aid will return in six months time to review the skills and practices of the newly graduated hairdressers.

Hairdressing is, however, by no means a new practice in the CCF community. We recently featured a story on the popular CCF hairdresser, ​Granny Thim​. Granny Thim, 73, impressed the Hair Aid team with her precise cuts using a pair of kitchen scissors, but they wanted to make sure that she had the correct tools. The course ended with a graduation ceremony in which each trainee was gifted with a tool kit of essentials for cutting hair.