'All people with facial disfigurements should be as proud as I am'
13-year-old Lucas Hayward is one of the stars of the CBBC documentary My Life and a billboard kid for Changing Faces' Face Equality campaign
I was born with a facial disfigurement and look different from most people.
I have grown up being stared at because of the way I look. I have been bullied at school, I'm often thought of as having learning difficulties and I'm treated differently to other kids.
I remember thinking all adults were angry, because of the way they used to look me.
One day in my village primary school (I was nine years old) I'd had enough, so I just got up and went home.
That caused a quite a stir, and it was soon after that my parents got in touch with the charity Changing Faces for help and advice.
Someone from the charity came to my school to help the teachers and thankfully things got much better from there on.
That's why I decided, along with Harry, Max and Lauren, to get involved with the Changing Faces children's campaign for Face Equality.
I want to help other children like me by changing people's unconscious attitudes towards disfigurement, and by showing people that I am happy with the way I look and I would like them to be happy too.
The BBC was interested in what was happening and wanted to follow the four of us, and film a documentary of our involvement with the poster campaign, which turned out to be a lot of fun as the cameras shadowed us over the course of a few months.
First we went to an advertising agency. They asked us what we wanted to say to the world, and then we went to the photographer's studio where we had our portraits made for the posters.
They filmed me at home and around and about with my brother, but the most exciting bit was when the posters were up in the London Underground and we went to see who's poster was in which station.
The most impressive part of that day's filming, for all of us, was when we came out of one station, just as it was getting dark, and we saw ourselves on this giant illuminated display, it was bigger than a double decker bus.
I never dreamt I would see myself up in lights in the middle of London.
We all felt like film stars!
It's exactly that sort of confidence and pride I would like other young people with disfigurements to be able to feel more of the time.
• Lucas Hayward participated in the CBBC documentary series My Life: Billboard Kids. My Life: Billboard Kids is on tomorrow morning, 11.30am
Writers name
The Guardian 05-03-2010
Advertisers Company:
Consort Charity
Advertiser's website:
http://www.consort24.com