Bandanas for the Brave

We aim to provide every child & young person that has been given a cancer diagnosis, A FREE BANDANA.  We started up our charity in 2013 after our own experience, when our son was diagnosed with a Brain tumour  in 2010.  

Cancer is a hard enough disease to come to terms with but when your child loses their hair due to chemotherapy/radiotherapy it truly is a devastating time of their journey, people do not realise what an impact this has on your child, boy or girl its doesn't matter, the pain is just the same.  The process of losing your hair actually is really very quick just a matter of days from a full head of hair to almost nothing, and after we seen first hand how this affected our own son we knew that this was an area which was perhaps looked over, and we wanted to help these kids in some way, but just where not sure what to do.

So we sat down with our son and explained that we would like to help other children that were in the same situation as him, and asked him what he thought was the hardest part of his journey? he said it wasn't the pain, or the sickness, it was his hair loss, and that is how and why Bandanas for the Brave, was created,

Bandanas For The Brave are growing every year, and unfortunately, the need is there for our children going through these harsh treatments for cancer, the changes they face not only effects their physical appearance, but can also leave emotional scars through side effects like loosing your hair, after starting off in Todds ward in the Haematology Ward in RVHSC  Belfast, we found that more and more families or nurses from other hospitals got in touch for help so with lots of hard word and support, we have now expanded and we are now able to provide bandanas to children from over 27 major hospitals like GOSH, and Leeds, Bristol, we have given many, many bandanas to children and young people already but with childhood cancers we will ALWAYS have new children every week to help.

If we can give a child a small part of the happiness and confidence that our son got when he put on that bandana, then we have fulfilled what we set out to do. 

Ellen & Simon Vance