The Cornerstone Day Center in Moss Side, Manchester, provides food and daytime shelter for many of the area’s homeless and vulnerable people. Tzu Chi volunteers have been offering care and assistance to the center since March 2008. In addition to free haircuts every month, they also provide hot meals and haircuts on British national holidays.
The free haircuts are provided by volunteers who are either professional hairdressers or amateurs. On October 28, volunteers came to the center to offer this service. As soon as a Tzu Chi flag was hung up, people began signing up for the service.
At first not many showed up for the service, but that changed around lunchtime when people came to the center for showers. In the end, the event, which was scheduled to end at 1:30 p.m., had to be extended one and a half hours to 3:00 when volunteer Lin Yi-jing (林宜靜), one of the two hairdressers, had to leave to catch the bus back to Liverpool.
On the whole, 23 men got free haircuts that day.
Source: Tzu Chi Quarterly winter 2010
