The charity gives away free real-hair wigs to young people who have lost their own hair through cancer treatment or other illnesses, and two years ago Joshua’s mum, Nikita, donated some of hers to the cause.
Joshua’s efforts came to a head on Saturday when he went to Meraki hair salon to have his long locks cut by his godmother, hair stylist Claire Ashplant: ‘I can’t remember the last time I had my hair cut,’ said Joshua.
Each wig costs between £350 and £500 to make, so a JustGiving page was set up to help raise money to go with Joshua’s hair donation.
As of the day of his haircut, the page had raised nearly £800.
Notre Dame pupil Joshua looked a tiny bit nervous as Miss Ashplant began cutting off long sections of his hair which she had gathered into braids of about 23cm long – the shortest lengths taken by the charity are 17cm, she said, so Joshua more than qualified. A suitable shorter hairstyle had been picked by Joshua himself after looking through a selection of photos.
With all the braids gone, Joshua’s new hairstyle started to emerge and it was clear he was pleased with it.
He said he would find it strange not having such long hair and would probably miss it – but he would not miss the times when strangers mistook him for a girl: ‘I did get quite annoyed,’ he said, referring to one occasion he was with his grandfather at a local store when someone asked him if he was with his granddaughter.
Now he has the fundraising bug, Joshua is looking at how he can raise more money for sick youngsters.
n Joshua’s JustGiving page is still accepting donations at www.justgiving.com/fundraising/joshua-gomes. At the time of going to print the figure stands at £1,000.
You need to be logged in to comment. If you had an account on our previous site, you can migrate your old account and comment profile to this site by visiting this page and entering the email address for your old account. We'll then send you an email with a link to follow to complete the process.