Coast-based Linwood House Ministries is helping save lives and turn others around through a project that employs women from the Downtown Eastside to recycle used hotel soap and then distribute it to poverty-stricken countries.

“In terms of self-esteem, it is the most beautiful thing,” said Sue-Ann MacCara, who is co-ordinating Linwood’s role in the project: staffing the soap disinfecting operation with women from Vancouver’s poverty and addiction-ridden Downtown Eastside. “Some of [the women] have felt so worthless for so long, and to be able to feel like their work is making a difference — specifically saving lives — is so profound and so powerful.”

The Vancouver project, which kicked off this month, is a partnership between Florida-based not-for-profit organization Clean the World, which runs soap-recycling projects throughout the U.S. and in Toronto and partners with non-governmental organizations such as World Vision to distribute it internationally; Linwood, which runs Sunshine Coast and Vancouver-based programs to build up the self-worth of women from the Downtown Eastside; and Christian humanitarian agency Mission Possible, which operates in the Downtown Eastside.

Clean the World targets both disease prevention and waste reduction through its soap-recycling projects. Its website notes that hand washing with soap significantly reduces both acute respiratory infection and diarrhoeal disease, which together kill five million people annually — most of them children under five. Since starting up in 2009, the organization has eliminated more than 340 tons of waste.

Linwood founder and president Gwen McVicker said the Vancouver project is still in its early stages. For now, a soap-disinfecting machine has been set up temporarily at Mission Possible’s Powell Street location, and the soap-cleaning operations are running just one day a week. But McVicker said she’s applying for funding, with the hopes of moving the operation to a permanent location, hiring staff, buying more machinery, which will allow for greater volumes and different soap-recycling processes, and eventually operating five days a week. Linwood is also hosting an art show fundraiser Sept. 19 at its Roberts Creek location, with some of the proceeds going towards this project.

So far, McVicker said, the project has run on two consecutive Mondays, and seven women have participated in the soap-cleaning process. All of them are familiar faces at Linwood, women who have been up to the Coast numerous times for Linwood events, such as a monthly three-day retreat called The Journey.

And this project creates a context where women struggling with homelessness or addiction can learn the skills to hold down a job.

“These women are so damaged through life experiences that they need a community and support to work in,” she said. “They can’t just go anywhere to work — you set them up to fail. This is a transition stage, realizing that ‘I can work’.”

For now, the women are volunteering their services as soap cleaners, but they will soon be paid $10 to $15 an hour for their labours. MacCara said so far, the women have been delighted to know that their efforts are saving lives and have told her they’d gladly work for free.

And MacCara said the project has the women dreaming that one day, they might travel across the world to hand-deliver some of their soaps to far away mothers and children. Asked if that was possible, she answered, “I’d never say never.”