How to Donate Hats to Cancer Victims

Chemotherapy is well-known for being "the cure as bad as the disease." If you or someone close to you has gone through this ordeal, you know that the hair loss that often accompanies chemo treatments only adds to the ordeal. An easy way for you to express your compassion for cancer patients is by donating or making hats to be distributed free of charge to people undergoing chemotherapy.

Things You'll Need

• Hats in good condition
• OR
• Yarn
• Knitting needles
• Chemo cap pattern

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Instructions

• 1

  Go through your closets and any boxes of old clothes to find lightly worm hats to donate---
  hats still in good condition and attractive, but which you don't wear anymore. Remember cancer does not have an age limit, so include your children's old headwear, too.

• 2

  Make a hat to donate. Groups like HeadHuggers.org and ChemoCaps.com provide patterns for you to knit, crochet, or sew a cap for a cancer patient. These patterns take into account patients' special headwear needs: a hat that is not made to sit on a full head of hair, a cap made of materials that don't itch against a bare skull, headwear designed to cover the back of the head as well.

• 3

  Locate a charitable organization which will handle giving your donated hat(s) to cancer patients. Your local hospital or the American Cancer Society might collect hats for this purpose, or may be able to point you toward a reputable local agency that does this work.

• 4

  Get all the information you will need on how the hat distributing organization wants you to send the hats you donate. Find out if there are special packaging and labeling requests that will make their work easier.