SWITCHING TO NEW JUSTGIVING CHARITY PAGE AT END OF NOVEMBER: https://justgiving.com/showerbox

ShowerBox was born out of the human need to feel good and lead a safe life.

I’m Sarah Lamptey, a volunteer for various homeless organisations. During a conversation I had with a guest at a winter shelter a few years ago, I was told of the need for showering facilities in London, as they have in other parts of the world. Indeed, as they used to have here, so I began to explore this with homeless organisations across the capital.

Being powerless to maintain personal hygiene compromises mental and physical well-being, exacerbating feelings of inadequacy and ensuring the lack of motivation and confidence needed to create positive change. If that wasn’t enough, the spread of preventable, debilitating disease costs the NHS millions each year.

Following an article exploring this for Huffington Post, I started a petition to raise awareness and spoke to the London Mayor’s Office, who said they planned to support existing day centres. But there are reasons why the centres are not able to be fully effective for all. They do incredible work with what they have, but space and resources are for the most part limited. Existing showers cannot meet the demand, they are not open all day and every day and some people living on the streets are battling addictions, meaning that certain environments worsen this harshest of challenges. And so on. So I wanted to see what I could do to help.

Now, thanks to so many amazing donations, along with wonderful volunteers, I run a converted shower trailer every Saturday from St Giles Church, London, and 45 individuals come to us for showers each session, with twice as many for wellbeing donations.

We are now launching in Birmingham! Volunteers Don Russell and Bruce Loudon have explored and identified the need for showers in Birmingham, and working alongside existing homeless organisations already doing great work in the area, plan to run showers from our converted van, late in 2022.

We need as much as help as possible to make this a reality! Please give what you can, to help us finish converting the van, and take it to the streets.

With huge thanks and love from,

Sarah and the ShowerBox team x