When Sara Cherian started spearheading the ‘Gift Hair, Gift Confidence’ programme a decade ago, little did she know that she would be afflicted with breast cancer herself. Under the umbrella of The Cherian Foundation, the programme aims to provide women cancer survivors with quality wigs, enabling them to lead richer and more fulfilling lives with confidence. She explains the economics of it, ‘A wig around shoulder length commercially would cost around ₹25,000 upwards. The actual cost of making the wig is ₹8,900, out of which ₹3,900 is borne by Raj Hair International, the parent company as part of its CSR initiative towards The Cherian Foundation. The remaining ₹5,000 is borne by a sponsor. The wigs are extremely labour intensive. It takes 10-12 days to make one single wig.’
With a Masters in International Business from the Bordeaux Business School, France, Sara is part of the family business. Yet, is her role as Trustee on the Board of The Cherian Foundation and this programme that she is particularly passionate about.
‘Hair loss is one of the blatant side effects of chemotherapy, and there is no escaping it. The reason we started 'Gift Hair, Gift Confidence' was to commemorate the memory of my grandmother whom we had lost to ovarian cancer. She was a doctor as well.’
It helped that Sara come from a family which has been in the human hair or wig-making industry for the last 40 years. ‘About ten years ago, we realised that the Adyar Cancer Institute was exploring the idea of providing wigs to its women cancer patients. My brother George Cherian decided to take up this initiative under the Foundation's umbrella around 2014. Two years into running the programme, the Adyar Cancer Institute conducted a study. We had a positive response from them; the study revealed that cancer patients wearing wigs responded far better to treatment as opposed to patients not wearing wigs.’
Since then, ‘Gift Hair, Gift Confidence has travelled across India to many hospitals such as the Tata Memorial in Mumbai, Safdarjung in Delhi, Shankara Hospital in Karnataka, and NGOs such as V Care, which provide wigs and cancer support to underprivileged cancer patients in Assam and Chandigarh. Sara and the rest of the Cherian Foundation are working tirelessly with like-minded hospitals to make the wigs available in as many centres as possible.
She adds, ‘We have organised orientation programmes for cancer patients at these various hospitals or NGOs. We have also uploaded videos on YouTube, tutorial videos. In order to help them, we have released these videos in regional languages in Hindi, Malayalam, Kannada and Tamil. We hope to add more languages in the coming months.’
Sara has also served on the board of other organsiations. She was Chairperson of the YWCA Community College and Vice-President of the YWCA. Ironically, she was diagnosed with breast cancer herself a few years ago. Although she was able to beat it, she admits it wasn’t easy. ‘We have been educating cancer patients about hair loss and how to overcome it by wearing wigs to boost their confidence and morale. But when it affects you personally, it is as daunting and as scary as it would be to any other cancer patient. Twenty-five out of 1,00,000 women are diagnosed with breast cancer. Hair loss is not associated with all cancers, but primarily with breast and ovarian cancer. The most important thing is, when you are being diagnosed, you are diagnosed with cancer, to get into the treatment plan at the earliest.’