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Stylists Help Fill the Back-to-School Haircut Gap

by Tom Henderson (Subscribe to Tom Henderson's posts)
Aug 2nd 2010 2:30PM

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Filed under: Places To Go, In The News, Day Care & Education, Fashion

Back to school haircuts

Don't let Dad be the stylist. Credit: Corbis

Today, class, we study Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

Maslow tells us all human beings have basic needs: There's air, food, water, sleep and ... spiffy haircuts?!

Maslow may have overlooked that last one, but researchers/stylists at the Hair Cuttery, the largest family-owned chain of hair salons in the country, know a basic human need when they see one.

The New Britain Herald in Connecticut reports these stylists live by a simple motto: "Every child, no matter what their economic situation is, deserves a back-to-school haircut."

So Hair Cuttery stylists throughout the country have donated more than 500,000 haircuts to returning students in the past 11 years.

In New Britain, the Herald reports, stylists have been offering free haircuts to underprivileged children for the past three years. This year, they're working with the Connecticut Department of Children and Families -- for every paid haircut given to one kid, stylists provide a free haircut to another served by the department.

"We've been out in the community a lot this year," Jamie Belcourt, manager of the salon in New Britain (22 miles southwest of Hartford), tells the Herald. "We want to try to help as many children as we can."

For Belcourt, the program is more than a bit of corporate good will. It hits home.

"Being a foster mother, I remember times when similar programs would allow the kids to get haircuts. They feel really special when they see their new hair," she tells the Herald. "It's their day to tell them (the stylists) what they want and how they want it, something they never get to experience."

Related: Baby Gets Snippy Over Chinese New Year's Haircut

Tags: back to school, BackToSchool, hair cuttery, haircuts, HairCuttery, low income program, LowIncomeProgram

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