The project

The Cambodia Volunteer Project, located in a small, rural village in Cambodia, teach and empower local children. We contacted them to see how we could help and learned that many of the children at the project had never had a proper haircut, and that the vast majority have headlice that remains untreated. We saw an opportunity for us to combine our existing skills to make a big difference in a unique way.

A bit about us

Conor is a self-taught barber who has recently gained a professional qualification from TotalBarber Academy, based in Shoreditch, London. I have been working for the last 2 years in the Charity sector, helping vulnerable people and assisting non-profit organisations with their social media, campaigning and awareness raising.

What will we be doing?

Together, we have arranged to volunteer for 10 days with The Cambodia Volunteer Project. Conor will be providing hair cuts and treatments to the young boys, and I will be delicing and styling the young girls' hair. We will also be documenting the experience, taking photographs and creating material to help The Cambodia Volunteer Project gain further recognition.

Our main aim is to ensure that our volunteering is sustainable, and that the good work will continue after we have left. We will therefore also be providing adults with the skills to cut hair, not only to enable them to cut their family and friends hair, but to potentially assist them into a lucrative, long-term and highly sought after profession. We would love to be able to leave the adults with home-made hairdressing kits, to better look after their children's hair and to get them started with a possible future career. These kits will consist of - combs, scissors, electronic clippers, headlice treatment, hair cleansing products and styling products.

How can you help?

We are raising funds to help us to purchase high-quality equipment and supplies to give the children the best possible hair cuts and treatments, and then to donate to the older children and adults.

We would be immensely grateful if you could donate any money that you can. 500 pounds is not a huge amount to raise, but it will make the world of difference for this community. The more money that we raise, the higher quality supplies we can purchase and the more kits we can donate to the families!

300 pounds will be going towards the supplies and running of our initiative, and towards The Cambodia Volunteer Project for general running and upkeep. Any funds that are raised on top of this will be used for hairdressing kits to maintain good haircare for the children and to help older Cambodian people enter into a job they may well have never dreamed of doing!

We also hope that by sharing this page and donating, together we can help raise awareness about responsible volunteering, and encourage others to see that there are a multitude of unique ways that we can help. Let's show that we can creatively channel our existing skills and learn new ways to help and support those less privileged!