Little girl shows big generosity
Neighbors | Submitted.Jensyn Orr, 8, gets ready to donate her hair to Locks of Love. The organization, which makes hairpieces for children suffering from medical hairloss, requires donors to have 10 inches of hair.
Neighbors | Submitted .Jensyn Orr, a second-grader at Poland North Elementary School, shows off her freshly cut tresses. She donated her hair to Locks of Love on Jan. 20.
Neighbors | Submitted .Jensyn Orr is happy with her new haircut. Hair stylist Kim Nocera cut Jensyn's hair for her donation to Locks of Love.
By GRACE WYLER
gwyler@vindy.com
When 8-year-old Jensyn Orr decided that she wanted to cut her long blonde hair last summer, her mother suggested she let her hair continue to grow so that she could cut it for a good cause.
“I said, honey, it’s such a shame to let all of this hair go to waste,” Sarah Orr, Jensyn’s mother, said. “And I explained to her about Locks of Love.”
Locks of Love is a foundation that makes hair pieces for disadvantaged children suffering from medical hair loss. Most of the beneficiaries of Locks of Love have lost their hair as a result of alopecia areata, a disease that has no known cause or cure.
So Jensyn, a second-grade student at Poland North Elementary School, waited four months to let her hair grow to the required 10 inches. She donated her tresses to Locks of Love Jan. 20.
She donated her hair because she hopes to help another little girl, Jensyn said.
Both Sarah and Jensyn said that people have been impressed by the young girl’s selfless donation.
“I told my class,” Jensyn said.
“My teacher said, ‘That was very nice of you.’”
“It was an opportunity to teach and instill something — that she was helping another person or another child,” Sarah said. “I hope she really, truly realizes that she did an amazing thing.”
But whether or not Jensyn realizes the magnitude of her generosity, she is ready to do it again.
“If my hair grows another 10 inches, I will donate it,” Jensyn said.
And at Poland North’s Make-A-Wish fundraiser Feb. 5, Jensyn offered to give up her hair to that beneficiary as well. “She said, ‘If that if she needs hair, she can have mine, too,” Sarah said.