Over 800 million bars of used soap are thrown away each year by U.S. hotels alone. A staggering statistic on a basic necessity caused Derreck Kayongo, a Ugandan refugee, to develop the Global Soap Project, an Atlanta-based nonprofit organization which cleans, sanitizes, and reforms the travel- size bar into a regular-sized soap that gets shipped around the world to the refugee camps, distressed communities, and areas affected with humanitarian disasters.
Kayongo sought refuge in Kenya during the late 1970s, the time of Idi Amin’s dictatorial rule which caused thousands to flee the country. “Staying in the refugee camp, I noticed we lacked the bare necessities,” recalled Kayongo, an international developer for CARE, an organization based on fighting global poverty. “This was especially true for women who were with children.”
After learning the used soap was thrown, Kayongo reached out to hotels, which now send the used soap to the organization’s warehouse in Norcross, ranging from distances as far as California. Volunteers come every weekend to sort the massive piles of soap by hotels to prevent mixing of colors, scents, and PH balances; clean by shaving the top layer of the soap; and finally, place the granulated soap in a mixing machine that forms it into regular-sized bars.
“I travel to Africa and other countries frequently [for work] and visit these areas that are in need of simple things that we take for granted,” said Sureyya Hornston, who works at the Centers for Disease Control in its HIV/AIDS divison, and volunteers with the Global Soap Project. “You get this guilt of gluttony, but doing something as simple as cleaning and remaking soap is a great way to give back.”
And while most may not be eyewitnesses to the distressed population, other volunteers came to give back just because it’s fun. “Honestly, I could do this all day,” said Hannah Snowden, a sophomore at Georgia State University. “But it is also great that something so simple can make a huge difference to someone.”
“I hope to create a symbiotic relationship with [this organization] by systemizing it in such a way that [in the U.S.], we get soaps out of our landfills and water systems, while sending the same to the poor countries in hopes to have a first line of defense against illnesses and disease,” added Kayongo, who founded the organization in 2009.
The Global Soap Project has sent over approximately 10,000 bars of soap to Haiti, 20,000 bars to Ghana’s prison population, and many more to afflicted countries around the world.
For information on the Global Soap Project, visit www.globalsoap.org.
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