Dzuyen Pham cuts Tyler Blake’s hair as part of Hair Cuttery’s Share A Haircut program, which donates a haircut to a homeless individual for every haircut purchased February 2 and 3.
Career experts say an important factor in landing a job could sometimes be as simple as a clean haircut.
College Park’s Hair Cuttery is one of several hoping to help some in the area achieve this goal by offering the homeless population free cuts.
As part of its Share-A-Haircut program, Hair Cuttery on Route 1 will donate a haircut to a local homeless or low-income person for every haircut purchased during business hours yesterday and today.
“Certainly as a company, we know that having a fresh, new haircut can make you feel good and confident,” said Diane Daly, Hair Cuttery’s public and community relations director. “Particularly with homeless people, if they want to get back into working, having a haircut is important for interviews and just boosting confidence in general.”
The program began 16 years ago in an effort to provide haircuts for children in low-income families each fall before school started. During the program’s first 14 years, “hundreds of thousands” of children received free haircuts, Daly said.
Hair Cuttery now has expanded Share-A-Haircut’s scope to provide help for more homeless people across the country.
“We knew there were more people to help than just children, so we decided to help adults in need as well,” Daly said.
After expanding services to adults in the last year, Hair Cuttery provided more than 35,000 haircuts to homeless people across the country, including 133 people near the College Park area.
Daly said there is a definite “uptick in business” during the Share-A-Haircut days, a trend she attributes to customers’ charitable nature.
“People are trying to get a haircut anyways, and if they know they can help someone out, we absolutely see more of a turnout,” Daly said.
To translate a purchased haircut into a free one, Hair Cuttery tracks the number of haircuts sold on applicable days and prints an equal number of vouchers for free haircuts. The salon then works with social service agencies to give the vouchers to homeless people, which can be used at any Hair Cuttery in the country during any time throughout the year.
While seemingly small, a free haircut can be incredibly helpful for low-income individuals, said Lori Proietti, executive director of the Laurel Advocacy & Referral Service — a local nonprofit that manages a food pantry.
The group also runs a crisis center and helps low-income people find “self-sufficiency.”
“A haircut can make all the difference in the world for our homeless clients,” Proietti said. “It can really determine if they can get a job or not, and it also lets them feel good about themselves.”
For Erika Armetta, MaryPIRG’s Hunger and Homelessness campaign coordinator, the Share-A-Haircut program is a great way to remind students at this university about the reality of poverty.
“At the University of Maryland, a lot of students feel like we’re in a little bubble of 17- to 22-year-olds and therefore don’t really pay much attention to the outside,” the junior dietetics and psychology major said. “But they need to realize that we can make a better Maryland, a better community and a better university by giving back.”
