She was bullied after donating her hair to charity. This is how she responded
Perhaps everyone can remember getting a bad haircut at some point. But for Jetta Fosberg a haircut – 14 inches of which she donated to support children diagnosed with cancer – turned into a nightmare.
The 10-year-old from Dayton, Ohio, has been bullied ever since making the overwhelming chop to her hair, which she donated to “Wigs for Kids,” an organization that supports children who have lost their hair due to cancer treatments, according to WHIO. For a while, the administration at her school wasn’t making moves to stop the harassment.
Jetta took matters into her own hands, posting updates to a Facebook page “Stand With Jetta” that her family set up and now has more than 60,000 followers.
“‘Stand With Jetta’ was created to encourage & show support for Jetta. No negative comments allowed! ;)” the description for the page reads.
Her mother, Heidi, who said the haircut was Jetta’s idea (she even researched to find the organization to donate to), took photos along the way to share the journey, which are now shared on the page.
After donating her hair, Jetta returned for another cut.
“She wanted it shorter, so we went back and they cut it shorter and I think that’s when things got worse,” Heidi told WHIO. And children at school started making negative comments. “You know, about wanting to be a boy, and being ugly.”
When Heidi approached the principal at Pathway School of Discovery where Jetta attends, she wasn’t given much help.
“[He] told me that he didn’t know of any child that had ever died from words, and that we needed to toughen up and deal with it, and he would deal with it how he saw appropriate which was obviously not the response we were looking for,” she said.
“Some kids go through this, far more severe, far longer than Jetta has endured, but it shouldn't matter,” she said. “We just want them to realize that this isn't just kids being kids and kids shouldn't get to say things like this.”
According to a posting on the Facbook page, the president and CEO of the charter school reached out Saturday to apologize, say they are taking the matter seriously, and are committed to making the school a safe place.
Heidi said the response on the “Stand With Jetta” page has been overwhelming.
“The whole experience is pretty surreal at this point,” she said. “The Facebook page is getting hundreds of comments and messages a day, support shared around the world.”
She recently established a T-shirt fund-raising campaign to donate funds to an anti-bullying nonprofit and Wigs for Kids.
