Update 4.18.2021
Good news, since last week, $1,831 has been raised of the goal of $5,964 to distribute 180 Essential Hygiene Kits to people living on the streets of our city. We are 30% there, we are close.
Here’s the plan to raise the rest of the funds to continue making kits leading to the larger vision.
Please let a couple of LA friends who live on the West Side know about this.
Please also post to social media.
If you want to volunteer please reach out as there is a lot to do to get this off the ground.
Thank you,
Harris Silver
The slightly longer update:
The vision for Humans Helping Humans essential hygiene kits is to manufacture the products locally in Los Angeles. The items themselves will be made with all natural products, including packaging. For instance the dental floss will be made with hemp instead of plastic, the toothpaste won’t come in a plastic tube. The kits will be 100% compostable. People currently living on the street will be trained and paid to make the kits.
The reasons for this for this is the understanding that societal problems cannot be solved by causing environmental damage while solving them. The job creation component is based on the teachings of Maimonides on charity as well as the teachings of Pope Francis on how to give to the poor. This is a founding philosophy that has the power to change things.
Even though we are not yet there with the 100% compostable products, these kits are not like other kits that are given out.
Our kits come in a rugged bag made from undyed natural canvas and a metal zipper not a packaged in a ziplock bag plastic bag.
There is no shampoo, conditioner, shower gel, or travel size anything in our kits. Not because we didn’t think about putting shampoo and conditioner in our kits, because we did. There is a reason why there is only one soap in our hygiene kits. It is the same reason that Einstein used only one soap. Ther reason why you should too.
We don’t put a 16 oz. container of single use plastic water in our kits because we think the scale of the waste around homelessness is an environmental catastrophe.
Currently in LA 400,000 single use water bottles are used daily to hydrate this situation (1.5 billion yearly).
People ought to stop thinking they are being helpful by distributing water in single use plastic containers to anyone, ever.
The unnecessary waster generated by this is nothing other than normalized insanity at this point.
Does this matter? Yes, it does. What we are doing as a society isn’t working. We are making things worse not better. We need to look at the system and develop strategies and tactics that lead to different behaviors and outcomes. Imagine how things would change things if we brought this philosophy to how we build shelters for the unsheltered? Imagine if we brought it to how we build shelters for ourselves? It needs to start somewhere.
Politicians who we have entrusted with our tax dollars speak of a homeless problem without acknowledging that they are mis-tating the problem. We have a society problem, we have a mental health problem, we have an addiction problem, We have a poverty problem. People aren't poor because they are homeless they are homeless because they are poor.
And this is where there is a tremendous opportunity for positive change. Humans living on the street are not consumers, so let's not treat them like consumers. Let's not try to make them consumers again. Let’s solve for their human needs. Lets see what that looks like.
...there is something else.
My intention is that these hygiene kits are also a mirror. Our bathrooms are not temples to hygiene, rather they are shrines to toxic consumerism. Most bathroom products are unnecessary. Homeless people don’t need what you have in your bathroom, neither do you.
I’m not a social scientist and everyone living on the street has a different story but one of the structural reasons that there is a humanitarian crises in our city, is that society is disconnected from nature and from our own humanity. This is why we are intentionally, connecting back to natural systems, that provide our air, our food and everything else. We also humanize the homeless and make a connection in our approach to giving.
Thanks for reading, supporting, spreading the word, helping.
Harris Silver