Children With Hair Loss

Children With Hair Loss opened in September 2000. After researching, they didn’t find any organizations that were giving human hair replacements to children at no cost. Children With Hair Loss’s mission and goals are to never charge a family at a time when they need the most help. After years of intense fund raising, Children With Hair Loss was able to purchase their first building in 2005. The headquarters resides in South Rockwood, Michigan in an old renovated fire station. Originally, Children With Hair Loss’s focus was on children fighting cancer, until they found out that there were a lot of other reasons why children lost hair including Alopecia, burns, Trichotillomania and other rare diseases and disorders. To this day, Children With Hair Loss has never charged a child. Currently, they provide a customized human hair replacement and care kit to over 300 children a year!

Regina Villemure founded Children With Hair Loss after her niece, Sarah, was diagnosed with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia at age three. Sarah underwent chemotherapy for five years, and is now a survivor of more than 30 years.

Throughout Sarah’s treatments, Regina saw many children in the hospital who had lost their hair or who were wearing adult-sized synthetic wigs. With her hair industry experience, Regina knew that human hair replacements look the most natural on children, but also that they are very expensive. She realized that most families were unable to afford them, and she wanted to help! She immediately made it her mission to “Cover Young Heads to Heal Young Hearts.”™

• Hair should be at least 8 inches in length or longer is preferred.
• Hair needs to be clean and dry
• Non-chemically treated hair is preferred (but any hair in good condition will be accepted).
• Gray hair is accepted.

Donate Hair with Pilorum Salon and Spa.

Pilorum Salon and Spa is dedicated to helping people donate hair to children who have suffered from hair loss due to Cancer treatments, Alopecia, Trichotillomania, Burns, etc.  Pilorum Hair Salon has committed to help these children live full and happy lives without the added stresses of society potentially singling them out for being different.

We are strong believers and proud supporters of this cause. Pilorum Salon and it’s elite stylists have made a point to give scheduling priority to generous donors who want to donate their hair to “Wigs for Kids” and “Children With Hair Loss”.  

After extensive research Pilorum Salon and Spa has carefully chosen two organizations to send all hair donations. When we started our mission we wanted to team up with non profit organizations (501 (c) 3 non-profit to be exact) that provided these hair pieces to children at zero cost to their families. The two organization we have carefully chosen are: Wigs for Kids and Children With Hair Loss.

Please help us on our mission and donate today!

How Long Does Hair Have To Be To Donate?

Hair needs to be a 8-12 inches in length to donate to Children With Hair Loss or Wigs for Kids.

What to expect when donating your hair at Pilorum Salon and Spa in Niles.

• Come with your hair dry and clean.
• Bring hairstyle picture ideas.
• As always, you will be greeted at Pilorum Salon and Spa with a warm welcome.
• Enjoy all the amenities our hair salon has to offer whether it be a complimentary latte, or a snack.
• Pilorum Salon provides you with all the appropriate paperwork that we submit with your hair donation. Just sit back and relax, because your Pilorum hair stylist will take care of everything.
• A thorough consultation with one of our talented stylist .
• Your hair will then be marked, tied then cut at desired length.
• Next comes a Pilorum signature massaging shampoo and conditioning treatment.
• You will then be walked back to the styling area to be cut, styled and blow dried.

Wigs For Kids Donations

For over 30 years, Wigs for Kids has been providing Hair Replacement Systems and support for children who have lost their hair due to chemotherapy, radiation therapy, Alopecia, Trichotillomania, burns and other medical issues at no cost to children or their families.The effects of hair loss go deeper than just a change in a child’s outward appearance. Hair loss can erode a child’s self-confidence and limit them from experiencing life the way children should. With an injured self-image, a child’s attitude toward treatment and their physical response to it can be negatively affected also. Wigs for Kids helps children suffering from hair loss look themselves and live their lives. Because we never charge families for hair replacements, we depend on generous people like you that want to help donate hair for cancer and other sources of hair loss. In order to help children who have suffered from hair loss due to complications such as Alopecia in children and other medical issues, a monetary or hair donation is always appreciated.

Donating Hair to Cancer Patients with Wigs for Kids

Our Mission: Helping Children Look Themselves and Live Their Lives!

When Children lose their hair, they don’t just suffer physically. The change in their appearance can drastically undermine their self-image and sabotage their self-esteem. To help heal the pain of these struggles, Certified Cosmetic Therapist Jeffrey Paul founded Wigs for Kids, a nonprofit organization that has been serving children suffering from hair loss since 1981.

Wigs for Kids is a cooperative effort among Certified Cosmetic Therapists throughout North America who share a common goal. “Children shouldn’t have to worry about how they look, especially when they’re in the middle of a health crisis,” says Jeffrey Paul. “We want to give these kids the opportunity to feel good about themselves again.”

The value of all children’s wigs Hair Replacements is $1,800. “These are custom-made Hair Replacements,” says Jeffrey Paul. “Each prosthesis is hand-tied and is made completely from human hair. We make sure they look just like a child’s own hair.”

“They won’t come off on the baseball field or in the playground,” he adds. “Kids can count on them. And because kids look just the way they did before, they feel better about themselves. They look in the mirror and their eyes light up. To see that light in their eyes … that’s priceless.”

Our History: Looking back over the past 30 years, Wigs for Kids founder Jeffrey Paul cannot believe his incredible journey.

He was a successful hairdresser with a thriving business. He traveled all over the world to work with powerful presidents and gorgeous models. But one day, his 15-year-old niece walked into his salon, crying. She tearfully begged him to stop her hair from falling out. His immediate thoughts were that it was not serious. But when he saw the look in her father’s eyes, he knew it was something more. It turned out that she had just been diagnosed with leukemia. “Uncle Jeff, you know I’ve been trying to get on the gymnastics team all my life,” she cried. “My hair is going to be falling out when it’s time to try out.”

Although chemotherapy would help save her life, it would also leave her with no hair. “I promised her that she would have hair,” Paul says. “And when you make a promise to a kid, you keep it.”

He did some research and learned that designing children’s wigs is complicated because kids are smaller and more active than adults. So, he worked with doctors and prosthetics specialists to devise a hairpiece that would withstand typical kid activities, such as swimming, gymnastics, and sleepovers. They came up with a wig that adhered to the scalp under the most aggressive conditions. And if it got wet, it would look like everybody else’s hair, because every strand of hair was hand-tied.

Paul’s niece was fitted with her wig in time for her gymnastics competition. “My heart was pounding as my wife and I sat in the stands,” he recalls. “And when my niece jumped off the apparatus, she looked up into the stands at us and pointed to her head. Tears ran down my face. I knew that God was taking me to another place in my life. The time was right for me to reach out.”

He got his chance after a local newspaper ran his niece’s story. Wanting to do something good for the community, he asked readers to send him their old wigs, which he would then refurbish and donate to needy patients. “The next day, I received 500 wigs that were beyond repair,” Paul says. “People meant well, but they sent us wigs that had been in their closets since the 1950s. So my wife and I used our own money to start a wig bank.” In no time, word got out that he was helping children and adults who needed wigs.

When a flood destroyed his salon and the insurance company would not cover the damages, he jumped at the chance to open his new business. And he found the perfect space — a medical office that offered the privacy he needed. “When you’re working with somebody who has no hair, you can’t work in an open salon,” he explains. Soon, instead of cutting and styling hair, Paul was custom designing full-cranium prosthetics, or wigs, for children and adults who lost their hair due to medical conditions. To this day, each handcrafted wig is made of about 150,000 strands of natural hair. The individual strands of hair are hand-tied onto the foundation of the wig, which is created from a mold of the person’s head for a snug fit. “I learned on the job and asked some great people to teach me what I didn’t know,” he says. “Quite by accident, I became an innovator.”

Paul didn’t accept hair donations at first. But one day a woman who had cancer came to see him with her daughter who had hair so long she was sitting on it. “Her beautiful, natural blonde hair hadn’t been cut in 18 years,” he explains. “After her mother’s consultation, her daughter said, “Mom, I want to cut my hair for you.” After we all dried our tears, I realized that this child could give her mother nothing more than a part of her body. The mother was so moved that I said I would do it.”

It didn’t take long for the company to grow. “I’d always been an educator and motivational speaker, so I trained people all over the world to do what we were doing: restoring beautiful hair by creating wigs for children, women, and men,” Paul says. He also informed medical professionals and social workers of the hair replacement and children’s wigs options for donating hair to cancer patients.

“There were a lot of kids in need,” he recalls. “The business was getting bigger than we could handle out of our pockets.” So on behalf of Wigs for Kids, he filed for, and received, non-profit status for his charity for children. Now, volunteers sort the donations of hair, answer questions, speak at schools, and hold fundraisers. “We’re a small organization on the inside so we can make a big impact on the outside,” Paul says.

Here are a few points to consider if you are generous enough to donate your hair to Wigs for Kids:

1)  Make sure hair is a minimum of 12 inches for proper hair donation length. Pull curly hair straight for a more accurate measurement.

2)  Hair must be clean and dry. Wet hair will mold in shipping and will be thrown away.

3)  Hair cannot be permed, color-treated, or highlighted. Temporary coloring or highlights that wash out are acceptable but must be completely washed out before cutting. Gray hair is accepted.

Donation Pictures

Our Lookbook has additional pictures of some of our generous donors.