For one local woman, cutting hair is about more than a new look – it’s a way to give back to a community she feels she wronged as a youth.
As a young woman, Misty Shingoose was a street drug dealer, but now the 30-year-old hair stylist is providing something else on the street - haircuts for the homeless.
Every Sunday afternoon from 12 noon to 6 p.m., she parks her renovated camper van near the Calgary Drop-In Centre or the city’s downtown bottle depot on 10 Ave. S.W. and offers free haircuts to homeless people.
She brings along three boxes of Tim Hortons coffee, some doughnuts and other food, as well as clothing and outerwear like jackets, mitts and scarves. She has a few friends who come along to help.
“I spent the better part of my youth taking from the community and I affected people in a very negative way,” said Shingoose. “This was my redemption, my way to have a positive impact and pay back what I took for so long in a real active community life.”
The idea came to Shingoose, who works alongside her mother at Image Hair Design in Okotoks, around her 30th birthday, on Feb. 5, 2015.
She wanted to volunteer to cut hair in the Drop-In Centre, but the waiting list was over two months long and the Centre required a criminal record check for its volunteers – something that made Shingoose nervous after serving time in a federal prison for her past convictions for possession of narcotics.
On her birthday, she opened a GoFundMe account to raise money for a van and the necessary alterations. By the middle of April she purchased her camper and was ready to install a hairdressing basin and salon chair.
Her mobile hair salon was on the road by the beginning of June, but it was difficult at first to find clients.
“It was hard to convince people to trust me and get a free haircut,” said Shingoose. “They’d be like, ‘What do you mean, free? What do you mean, get in your van?’”
After six months and hundreds of rejections she now has regular clientele who visit her van on Sundays to freshen their look.
She has developed a rapport with those regular customers and they share their lives with one another as she cuts their hair. Every week brings more stories and more customers to her van door.
“It just seems to be getting worse out there, so I like being able to do my little part,” said Shingoose. “Whole families are on the streets now because of the economy and things are getting pretty rough. It’s heartbreaking.”
Armed with her scissors and styling tools, Shingoose hopes to make a difference in the lives of the people she encounters every week.
She said she knows how people feel when they get a new haircut in the salon, how it can make people feel better about themselves and she hopes her work can bring confidence to the homeless.
“It’s a very minor thing for me to give a haircut, but it’s a very major thing for people to see themselves in a mirror and be happy with what they see,” she said. “It helps people not feel so judged for their appearance in their dire situation.”
Shingoose attributes much of the success of her Haircuts for the Homeless campaign to her mother and their clients at Image Hair Design. The clothing drives initiated in the salon, and clients continue to bring clothing donations for Shingoose to deliver to the homeless.
“Everything started here in Okotoks with this salon,” she said. “It couldn’t have happened without the family and community in Okotoks. This is my service and my hobby that the entire community can get in on.”
Anyone who wants to make a donation of clothing or other items for the homeless can deliver their goods to Image Hair Design and monetary donations to help pay for gas and food can be made to the GoFundMe account, www.gofundme.com/homelesshaircutyyc
