Children and cancer. Two words that should never go together. But every week, around five children in the UK lose their lives to cancer. That’s five families who are faced with the worst news possible. Leukaemia and specifically acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL) is a type of cancer when your bone marrow mass produces non-functioning white blood cells, and it mostly affects children. Currently, the only cure for ALL is via a stem cell donor. My cousin, Kaiya, developed ALL, and spent many months at the Great Ormond Street Hospital waiting for a stem cell donor. You can only be a donor by registering to be one and sadly, due to a lack of donors, it is harder to find a match for a stem cell donor if you are from an ethnic minority group. However, Kaiya was determined to fight and along with her family and friends, she started a national appeal to find a matching stem cell donor.

Her nationwide campaign reached hundreds of thousands of people and thousands of people came forward to sign up to join the register. She single handedly increased the national stem cell donor register many times over through her appeals and by starting this campaign, she saved the lives of many children, who in turn found their match.

Unfortunately, when Kaiya was undergoing chemotherapy, she lost all her hair. This can be quite upsetting for young children, and so it was then that Kaiya was introduced to The Little Princess Trust. The Little Princess Trust made her a wig, made from real hair donations to help lift her spirit and self-esteem during a difficult time.

Due to her tireless campaigning and raising awareness, Kaiya was able to find a match and underwent a stem cell donation. She was cured completely of cancer, but unfortunately, during her recovery at Great Ormond Street Hospital, she developed an infection and sadly passed away at the age of six. However, her legacy lives on.

As part of her legacy, Kaiya asked others to “pay it forward” after her death. To make something positive from a negative and to help other children so they may face a different future to hers. As part of my promise to her at her funeral to pay it forward, I decided 2.5 years ago to grow my hair and raise awareness by donating it to The Little Princess Trust.

The Little Princess Trust is an amazing charity, which helps children with cancer, by giving them real hair wigs, which can help to regain their self-esteem. I have been growing my hair for over 2 years and now it is time for me to cut my hair and donate it to someone else who can use it.

I also wanted to raise money from my big hair cut for World Child Cancer Charity. World Child Cancer World Child Cancer is the leading international children’s charity dedicated to addressing the global inequality in childhood cancer care. Founded in 2007, thye now support 13 programmes in Africa, Asia and Central America. Their vision is a world where every child with cancer has equal access to treatment and care. Their mission is to improve diagnosis, treatment and support for children with cancer, and their families, in low and middle-income countries around the world

If you would like to donate to my cause and help to support this incredible charities, I would be very grateful and thank you for your generosity. If you are unable to donate, another way to ‘Pay it Forward’ may be to do a kind deed for a family member, a friend or even a neighbour or stranger. No act of kindness is too small. A small gesture or act of kindness can often have an exponential domino effect. If we all pledged to Pay it Forwards as a school community imagine the impact, we could make.

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