In October 2020, again to address a real issue highlighted by the COVID crisis, we began a partnership with the Harpenden & St Albans Hygiene Bank, housing a collection point within the shop. We strongly believe in combatting hygiene poverty and knew that there wasn’t a local, convenient point for our kind community in Redbourn to make donations. The Hygiene Bank supports those in poverty in the local community through the collection and distribution of essential toiletries and personal hygiene products. In these times of increasing poverty and hardship, use of food banks has become the norm for so many people. Often people experience hygiene poverty long before they have to rely on food banks, as they find they have to choose between feeling and being clean or eating that day. This hard choice can impact self-esteem and job prospects, and lead to bullying in school or work. It can mean that mums have to put scraped clean nappies on their babies, women and girls go without washing their hair or having access to sanitary items, men without a shave and teens without deodorant.
We’re so pleased to be able to do our bit to help tackle this ever-growing problem and have been delighted at how many of our local community have dropped in items to help. We’re already working hard to raise awareness of the initiative within our local community and we hope that by reaching out to a wider audience through social networks and brilliant online mags, we can encourage people from all over the country to locate their nearest Hygiene Bank collection point, give generously if they can, and find out other ways to support this worthy cause by visiting https://linktr.ee/thehygienebank.