Lindfield girl, Annabelle Sankey-Rigby, age 13, of Burgess Hill Girls school, decided to cut off (at least) 18 inches of her hair to donate to The Little Princess Trust, a charity who create wigs from hair donations for children suffering hair loss as a result of cancer treatment or alopecia and also fund research into childhood cancers.

“I’ve been watching a series on Netflix, called ‘Alexa and Katy’ about a girl my age living with cancer,” Annabelle explained. “In the series Alexa starts losing her hair due to cancer, and Katy, her best friend helps support her, even shaving off the hair that is still left in patches. As someone who’s always had extremely long hair for my age, from birth, my long hair has always been a big part of my identity and the series made me realise that losing your hair when it’s such a big part of your identity must be unbearable, especially when dealing with a serious disease as well. It made me appreciate just how important a real hair wig would be to me in that horrible situation. Although I was nervous about having so much hair cut off; knowing that I might help someone going through so much hardship was my motivation! I’ve realised that I don’t need my hair as much as children with cancer, alopecia or any hair loss condition do.”

Annabelle’s big cut took place at Denziloe Hair Designers on Wednesday 14th April. In addition to having 19 inches of hair cut off, Annabelle also asked people to sponsor her to help support Little Princess Trust to turn her hair into a wig; which take several weeks to make as they all have to be hand stitched. She has already raised over £850 at the time of publishing, but if anyone would still like to donate and help Annabelle to support this wonderful charity you can donate here: www.gofundme.com/f/annabelles-sponsored-haircut