Behind the Soap

The Global Soap Project recovers and recycles soap from American hotels. The discarded soap is sanitized, melted and remolded into new bars, then distributed to refugee camps in Africa. We figure, with 4.6-million hotel rooms in the United States, an estimated 2.6-million soap bars are discarded every day. Once this soap has been sanitized and remolded into new soap, it greatly improves the quality of life for hundreds of thousands of refugees, one bar at a time.

Headquartered in Atlanta and incorporated in Georgia, the Global Soap Project was founded by Derreck Kayongo, a senior level humanitarian relief expert whose own Uganda family fled the tyranny of Idi Amin in 1979.  During this tragic and despotic era, close to one million people lost their lives. Today, there are millions more internally displaced persons throughout Central and Eastern Africa, struggling to survive with limited or no access to clean water and soap.

As a result, there is a high mortality rate due to acute respiratory and diarrhea diseases, especially in children under five years old. In Uganda alone, the deaths of 200,000 children in a single year were due to preventable diseases—a number that could have been reduced by 76,000 if children had access to soap and proper hand washing. Numerous scientific studies indicate that hand washing with soap can reduce the risk of these diseases by 42-65 percent.

Derreck received an education in Kenya and eventually came to America to earn his Bachelors and Masters Degrees.  He has worked with notable NGOs and aid agencies including The Carter Center, CARE International, Amnesty International and the Congressional Hunger Center.

Utilizing his education, work and life experience, Derreck and his father the honorable Tom Kayongo have built a logistical process to recover, recycle and distribute soap to refugee camps. Their plan has garnered enthusiastic support from the hotel industry.

Together, Derreck and Tom designed the process by which discarded soap is recycled and processed for packaging and distribution.  In the United States, Derreck’s effort is joined by his wife Sarah and a board of directors comprised of travel industry veterans, corporate social responsibility specialists and experienced global economic development consultants to ensure the organization will grow in the most efficient and effective way possible.

The Global Soap Project is uniquely positioned to make an enormous impact not only in the lives of thousands of refugees, but also raise awareness of the dire situation that can be eradicated by a simple solution. To date, the Global Soap Project has enlisted more than 50 hotels in the Southeastern United States that have contributed more than 14,000 pounds of discarded soap.