Heads, you win: helping others, one shaved scalp at a time
SHAVING your head for charity may not be the first thing people might think of doing to cure the boredom of social distancing – but that is exactly what one group of young men have decided to do.
On Monday, a GoFundMe campaign was launched to raise money for the frontline staff in Wexford General Hospital who are working to fight the coronavirus outbreak.
When the campaign launched, the organisers said it was to ‘give something back in a small way – if we can raise €500 as a start, we will all shave our heads’.
Speaking to the Irish Daily Mail, organiser Ciarán Byrne said the fundraising scheme was a ‘spur-of-the-moment’ idea.
‘[On Monday evening] on WhatsApp, everyone was saying how bored they were with the whole situation. One lad suggested having his head shaved out of boredom, then the idea, “Why don’t we all do it for charity?” came up,’ Mr Byrne said.
He said he was nominated to get the ball rolling, and that they soon had 14 volunteers willing to shave their heads for charity.
To gauge the interest, he posted about it on Instagram and received a ‘mad’ response. He said the original idea was to raise money for the staff in Wexford General Hospital, but it was decided to donate the money to a charity instead, on behalf of the staff.
‘Someone from the hospital sent a message through a friend and said the guys in the hospital would feel bad taking the proceeds, because they feel they are lucky to still be in a job getting paid,’ said Mr Byrne. ‘So they asked us to do it for Wexford People Helping People charity on their behalf.’
THE groups posted details of the fundraiser on Facebook on Monday evening, and in less than 24 hours, they had raised more than €1,900, from over 130 donors, with an original goal of reaching €1,000.
Meanwhile, a Dublin-based management consultant said she received an ‘overwhelming’ response to a call-out on Twitter for personal protective equipment.
On Saturday, Miriam Ahern tweeted out a request for shower caps for frontline staff at a Dublin hospital after having a conversation with a friend of hers who is an emergency department doctor.
She tweeted: ‘ED doctor friend has asked me to help bulk-source disposable shower caps for frontline staff as part of their personal protective equipment. Their hospital needs a few hundred. Anyone know anyone in hospitality/hotel industry or other who can spare some.’
She said the response shows that this crisis ‘is really bringing out the good in people’.
‘The offers of help were fantastic, primarily from the hospitality industry,’ she said. ‘I put that call out on Saturday as a result of a casual conversation I had with a doctor friend of mine.
‘The response was very good. That was Saturday, she had a delivery into her hospital first thing Monday morning,’ she continued, adding that another 2,000 shower caps were delivered to the hospital yesterday.
On Twitter, Ms Ahern said the emergency department was now well-stocked and that staff were relieved and grateful.