A KIND hearted eight-year-old girl from Bowerhill will have her long locks turned into wigs for cancer sufferers when she has her hair cut to raise funds for charity and to help a friend get a new wheelchair.

Bowerhill Primary pupil Mia Mclaren is having at least 10 inches of her hair cut off next month to donate to the Little Princess Trust, to help children battling cancer, and to provide funds towards getting six-year-old Mya Plested, who is was born with a spinal cord injury, a new £7,000 light-weight manual wheelchair.

Over the last year, Mia's younger brother Rhys, six, has become close friends with Mya, who is a C5-T1 incomplete tetraplegic which affects all four of her limbs, whilst they have attended the Bowerhill school.

After Rhys came home from school, he would talk more and more about his good friend Mya and how she uses her wheelchair for her day-to-day use and after hearing about this, Mia decided to do this act of kindness and raise funds for the trust and towards getting a new wheelchair.

Mya's mother Lauren Plested, of Bowmans Court, Melksham, said: "When Mya told me that Rhys' sister was going to do this it honestly melted my heart. For someone so young to do such an incredible thing is pretty overwhelming.

"For her to come up with the idea herself is just amazing. The kindness shown by Mya and many others is helping us get closer to that £7,000 target. She is outgrowing her current wheelchair and will soon need a replacement. She only has use of her left thumb when using her wheelchair but that does not phase her.

"Mya was born at 28 weeks with a spinal cord injury and is unable to walk. I have to bathe her, dress her, take her to the toilet and carry her about but I would not have it any other way, she is my world.

"She undergoes intensive rehabilitation at the National Spinal Injuries Centre at Stoke Mandeville Hospital and has done for the past three years. However she does not let that phase her, she just powers on through, I am so proud of her."

The 24-year-old Ms Plested, who is a single mother but raises Mya with her former boyfriend Ben Masey, Mya, and Mia's mother Natalie Mclaren, will be present on July 19 at The Base Hair and Beauty salon in Bowerhill to see the charity haircut.

"I am so very proud of Mia for doing this. She heard about Mya from Rhys and one day she said to me, 'I want to cut my hair to raise money for Mya,' and that was that," said Mrs Mclaren, of Herons Court, Bowerhill.

"She has always had long her, it stretches down to her waist. She has already raised more than £700 and now she wants to raise £1,000 which she will split between the trust and the wheelchair. What she is doing is great."

To donate visit https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/mia-mclaren