NORWICH – The annual St. Baldrick’s fundraiser may still be months away, but that’s not stopping coordinators from getting a head start on the event.

The volunteers who organize St. Baldrick’s in the Norwich area are reaching out the community early on, asking for pledges, contributions, and a few good heads to shave.

“We’re trying to get the word out that we’re prepping for our 2015 event and we’re really in need of shavees,” said local St. Baldrick’s coordinator A. Wesley Jones. “Getting people signed up early and challenging their friends and co-workers creates competition to help us raise more money. That’s really our goal.”

Each year, the volunteer-driven St. Baldrick’s Foundation works to determine the most promising research to fund and create funding priorities to make the greatest impact for children with cancer. The organization coordinates its signature head-shaving events worldwide where participants collect pledges to shave their heads in solidarity with kids with cancer, raising much needed money to fund a worthy cause.

The numbers on childhood cancer are staggering, said Jones. The St. Baldrick’s Foundation cites two-thirds of children treated for cancer will experience long-term effects from treatment including loss of hearing and sight, heart disease, secondary cancers, learning disabilities, and infertility. But the ground gained in childhood cancer research is slowgoing, with only two new drugs developed specifically for childhood cancer over the last 20 years. One in five children diagnosed with cancer will not survive.