Your Neighbourhood Response Team, Working Together While Apart: Keep it Clean Collection of Shampoo, Toothbrushes etc.
VICTORIA, BC – We all know that keeping clean is helping contain the spread of COVID-19. But imagine if you didn’t have a home and running water or couldn’t afford to get basic personal hygiene products to keep safe and clean during this pandemic.
Our Neighbourhood Response Team is back, powered by United Way Greater Victoria and working in partnership with Better Business Bureau serving Vancouver Island, Big Brothers Big Sisters Greater Victoria, HeroWork Society and Soap for Hope Canada. This time we are joining together to safely collect new, unopened shampoo, toothbrushes and other personal hygiene products on Saturday, April 25 from 10 am to 2 pm in three locations:
- Parking lot of Westshore Learning Centre, 2139 Sooke Road, Colwood – please follow the clearly marked signage that indicates the entrance and exit
- Parking lot of Tulista Park, 9565 Fifth Street, Sidney
- Parking lot of Save-On-Foods Memorial Centre, 1925 Blanshard Street, Victoria – enter the parking lot off Pembroke Street between Quadra and Blanshard and follow the directions of the traffic volunteers. Please do not enter the parking lot off of Caledonia – this entrance is for the Victoria Police Department only.
Simply drive up, pop the trunk and drop off these new, unopened products:
- Shampoo and hair conditioner, any size containers
- Body wash and body lotion
- Deodorant
- Toothbrushes, toothpaste, dental floss
- Sunscreen
- Razors for men and women
- Pads, tampons and incontinence products
Please respect physical distancing by staying in your vehicles at all times and following volunteer instructions. Volunteers will be following safe practices.
Only attend if you are feeling healthy. Also please try to combine this drop-off with any other errands you need to do to limit your time out in the community and away from your home.
Our Keep it Clean Collection goal is 2,500 hygiene products. All items collected will be quarantined for 5 days before they are distributed back into our community. Soap for Hope Canada is working with the Greater Victoria Coalition to End Homelessness, the Aboriginal Coalition to End Homelessness as well as shelters, transitional homes, food banks, low income senior facilities, schools, Indigenous Communities and refugees to provide the hygiene amenities they need to stay healthy.
Providing this kind of not-for-profit sector support is being made possible through United Way Greater Victoria’s Local Love in a Global Crisis Fund. This fund is targeting four areas in response to the COVID-19 pandemic: providing additional help to isolated seniors; augmenting mental health and addictions support services; helping the social service sector prioritize and deliver urgent needs; and providing hotel accommodation for essential service workers.
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Jennifer Young
Project and Content Manager
United Way Greater Victoria
Cell: (604) 309-3937
Email: jennifer.young@uwgv.ca
BACKGROUNDER: United Way “unites” the generosity of people – business, government, labour and individual donors – with the skills, knowledge and expertise in the community to help ensure those in need reach their full potential. This collaborative approach is building a stronger, more resilient community to serve current and future generations.
As one of the region’s largest annual funders of local social service programs, we assist charitable organizations by identifying and funding programs to address immediate needs and underlying causes of our community’s most #UNIGNORABLE social challenges.
United Way is a year round fundraiser and community builder, and provides funding to create a strong and stable network of local services. For 83 years we have served the community and raised over $170 Million. Our work, as a community leader, is as relevant today as it ever was. And with the ongoing support of our donors, we will continue to positively change lives.
Better Business Bureau (BBB) For more than 100 years, Better Business Bureau (BBB) has been helping people find businesses and brands they can trust. In 2019, people turned to BBB more than 172 million times for BBB Business Reviews on more than 5.3 million businesses, all available for free at bbb.org.
Big Brothers Big Sisters of Victoria has a 42-year history of serving children and youth across Southern Vancouver Island and the Southern Gulf Islands. They have been successful in providing mentors for children and youth through 7 different in-school or community mentoring programs which operate in response to identified social issues impacting specific communities. Their mission is to “enable life-changing mentoring relationships to ignite the power and potential of young people.” They believe in the power of collectively working towards common goals that benefit our community and its citizens.
HeroWork is a charity that renovates other charities because many non-profit buildings are run down and in need of repairs or upgrades. With renewed buildings charities have bigger impact, are more sustainable, and better serve vulnerable populations.
To date HeroWork has completed millions worth of non-profit renovations in the greater Victoria region. In a typical year HeroWork engages over 150 companies and 900 volunteers. Together they participate in huge community events through which comprehensive renovations are completed in a fraction of normal time and costs. HeroWork describes these events as modern-day barn raisings, calling them “Radical Renovations.”
Soap for Hope Canada has been working in Greater Victoria for 5 years providing soap and hygiene amenities to community facilities. They do this by working with hotels collecting all the amenities that would have ended up in the garbage, reprocessing them and providing them to community facilities at no charge. They supply shelters, transitional homes, food banks, low income senior facilities, schools, Indigenous Communities and refugees with the hygiene amenities they need. In 2019, they distributed over 1 million products back into our communities.
