Helping young people living with cancer

Tim Lowe first came to study at St Paul’s College in 1972, intent on becoming a teacher.

Today, he has seen the charity he co-founded in 2006 help provide free real hair wigs to thousands of children and young people, as well as undertaking vital research into childhood cancer.

Tim studied at the college, which is a predecessor of the University of Gloucestershire, until 1975, and was Student President for his final year, which was the first year of the joint Student Union of the College of St Paul’s and St Mary’s.

Today, the University still provides teacher training and St Paul’s is now known as our  Francis Close Hall campus. Tim has fond memories of his time there, “It was a fantastic place to be, and I made some great friends. It was an exciting time to be in Cheltenham with a lot going on, including lots of live music, and I really enjoyed being there.”

After graduating, Tim went on to teach in a number of schools, including at Hereford Cathedral Junior School. During his time as head teacher there, his career took a different turn.

“Very sadly, one of our youngest pupils at the school, Hannah, passed away from a Wilm’s tumour in 2005. Following this, we were met with a huge number of people coming forward and asking what they could do to help, financially, practically and so on.

“So, together with Hannah’s parents, Wendy and Simon, we started to think about what we could do. We decided to set up a charity to help provide children and young people with free, real hair wigs, as having one of these had made a huge difference to Hannah while she was undergoing her treatment and helped her face the trauma of losing her own hair.”

Since then, the Little Princess Trust has gone from strength to strength. As well as giving around up to 130 wigs, and receiving 4000 hair donations, a month, the charity is the second largest investor into research into childhood cancers.

The charity also have a salon network of more than 80 wig fitters and ambassadors from all walks of life.

“We are very lucky to have so much support from fundraisers and supporters,” said Tim, “and were able to expand into funding research into new and better treatments for paediatric cancers in 2016. We have now put more than £20 million towards over 100 projects in this area. I was particularly pleased to see that this research has been able to find the rogue element which causes Wilm’s tumours, which is what Hannah had had in 2004.”

And last year, the new headquarters in Hereford were opened.

Tim said: “It really is a wonderful building, and it will enable us to help even more children and young people than ever before. We have come such a long way since the early days and are always grateful for the support we have. And the research and new centre will help us to be able to help even more people as we go forwards.”