FROM MONDAY TO Saturday every week, hundreds line up outside the Capuchin Day Centre for Homeless People in Dublin.

Breakfast and lunch are served each day, and shower facilities and fresh clothing are available most mornings.

Now, once a month, there’ll be a new service on offer: free haircuts.

The Haircuts 4 Homeless initiative, launched in Dublin on Monday, is the brainchild of UK hairdresser Stewart Roberts, who set up the scheme in his home town last year.

Roberts, a recovering addict, said he was inspired by Mark Bustos, a New York stylist who made headlines for giving haircuts to homeless people on the street.

The initiative has now expanded to eight different locations across the UK, where monthly events are run by volunteers who are also professional hairdressers.

Big response

At a friend’s suggestion, Roberts decided to look into setting up a Dublin branch and put a call out for volunteers on Facebook.

The response from Irish hairdressers, he said, was “phenomenal” – over 60 people expressed interest.

There was room for only seven volunteers at the team’s first Dublin event on Monday, but they managed to do 45 haircuts in just a few hours.

Over 300 people had come to the centre for breakfast that day, Roberts said.

As he sees it, giving homeless people a haircut is about helping to restore their self-esteem and giving them a sense of pride in their appearance.

“One of the clients [in Dublin] summed it up better than I could,” Roberts told TheJournal.ie.

‘No matter what my circumstances are,’ he said. ‘I still want to hold onto my dignity.’ That sums it all up, for me.

Read: In a south Dublin park, three men and a dog bed down for the night

Read: Life on the streets for Dublin’s migrant homeless