Headbands of Hope was created by Jessica Ekstrom during her junior year at NC State. She completed an internship at a wish-granting organization and noticed that girls enjoyed wearing headbands after losing their hair to chemotherapy. That gave her the idea to start Headbands of Hope!
For every headband purchased, one is given to a girl with cancer and $1 is donated to a childhood cancer organization of your choice.
Since April 2012, over 25,000 headbands have been donated to deserving girls. A line of buffs for boys was even started!
Throughout the years, this organization has done great things! One of their missions is to get college campuses involved and they do this with campus representatives. Meghan Murphy and Cera Allen accepted this position at App State recently and are so excited to see what’s in store!
Q: How did you originally hear about Headbands of Hope?
Cera: This past summer we had the incredible opportunity to work at a camp called Victory Junction.
Meghan: Victory Junction is a camp that provides life-changing experiences that are exciting, fun, and empowering to children with chronic medical conditions or serious illnesses for no cost at all.
Cera: All summer long my fellow staff members and I were purchasing Headbands of Hope so that we, as a staff, could buy enough headbands for every camper to receive one headband during our week at camp dedicated to children living with cancer.
Meghan: Headbands of Hope provided one free headband for each boy and girl there for this week and brought extra headbands for counselors to purchase.
Q: What’s one of your goals for App State and Headbands of Hope?
Cera: I would like to set up a distribution of headbands locally so that I can firsthand experience the magic this organization creates.
Meghan: One of my goals for Appalachian State’s Headbands of Hope is to eventually be at as many university events as possible. I would love more people to find out about this wonderful organization that can help spread hope one headband at a time.
Cera: I love App State because this is such a caring campus, and I know that if more people heard about Headbands of Hope that our support would continue to rise.
Q: What are your plans for future events?
Cera: In the future, we hope to bring Headbands of Hope to Boone by having local shops sell the headbands. We are constantly looking for organizations and clubs to come and share about Headbands of Hope and we plan on doing that as often as we can.
Meghan: We would love a good turnout for our give back night at Come Back Shack, which is May 4th!
Q: What have you done so far?
Cera: We were at the Fiddlers Convention and we have just worked on making ourselves known on campus!
Meghan: So far we have spoken at some organizations, sold numerous headbands and set up a date for a Come Back Shack Give Back Night.
Q: How can people buy headbands?
Cera: The first and easiest way to buy Headbands of Hope is by visiting www.headbandsofhope.org. If you use the promo code “cerahope” or “murphyhope” then you receive $1 off on your purchase.
Meghan: People can also find us on social media and see when we might have bulk orders in.
Cera: Or look for us on campus!
Q: What’s your favorite headband to wear?
Cera: This is actually the hardest question, because there are so many different types of headbands for different occasions and I love them all! I love my fiesta buff band for just relaxing and every-day wear; I love my yellow braided knit band for cold football games, and I love my boho band to dress up an outfit with some cute jewels!
Meghan: This is a very tough question because I literally have not found a headband that I do not like yet. I have one that I wear a lot. I wear the spring buff band very often because it is easy to wear when you’re in shorts and a t-shirt but then I love the winter wraps because they are very cute and in Boone they keep your ears very warm.
Q: Where can we find you on social media?
Twitter: @ASUWearsHope
Instagram: @ASUWearsHope
Facebook: Appalachian State Wears Hope