The nonprofit EBeauty Community for Cancer Support provides people undergoing medical treatment with free wigs and other products through the U.S. Mail.
“We are a national program that does a wig exchange through several partnerships and with different hospitals that we service across the country. We are a little operation with a big reach that has worked with USPS for the last 15 years,” said Carolyn Keller, EBeauty’s founder.
Keller, a cancer survivor, knows that losing hair is “quite traumatic.” She bought two wigs while undergoing treatment.
The organization started in the Washington, DC, area with Sibley Memorial Hospital as its first partner. A local hair salon would clean and refurbish donated wigs.
“We were helping one woman at the time, and it was nice to support her at a critical moment in her cancer journey when she is first looking into the mirror and seeing herself not look like herself anymore,” Keller said.
The need for wig requests and donations soon increased.
At the heart of the program is EBeauty’s pay-it-forward model: People mail in gently used wigs, which EBeauty cleans, refurbishes, and sends back out — free of charge — to someone who needs support during treatment.
“We received a request from the American Cancer Society and the Look Good Feel Better cancer support group to see if we could donate about 2,500 wigs. So we did, and in each wig, we put in a tag saying if you need to donate a wig and if you need to request a wig, send it here, to EBeauty,” she said.
Almost overnight, EBeauty received about 40,000 wigs through the mail.
EBeauty supports patients battling all types of cancer as well as alopecia, an autoimmune disorder that causes hair loss. Although women primarily receive EBeauty’s services, men and children are clients, too.
EBeauty moved to Maryland where Keller’s sister, Colleen Brown, helps run the nonprofit’s fulfillment center in Stevensville.
“We ship in and ship out from that location, and the postman is our best friend,” Keller said.
Stevensville Post Office Rural Carrier James “Jamie” Graham Jr. said he delivers “anywhere between 20-30 packages of wigs a day” to EBeauty.
“I can’t say enough about how great the work is that they do for people. They host all of these events that bring people together to talk about treatment and how to deal with everything. It strikes home for everybody that has a relative who has had cancer or is currently fighting cancer,” he said.
Jen Greene, EBeauty’s executive director, said EBeauty distributed more than 15,000 wigs to patients nationwide and received 12,197 wigs by mail last year.
“The Postal Service is delivering all of these packages, whether they’re incoming or outgoing, so it kind of underscores how vital the partnership is,” Greene said.
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