“When living as a refugee in Kenya, I realized soap was hard to come by, even completely nonexistent sometimes. . . . People were suffering from illness simply because they couldn ’t wash their hands.” This experience motivated Derreck Kayongo to found the Global Soap Project, an initiative to provide bars of soap for developing countries, where even schools, hospitals, and health clinics can lack such basic supplies. A highly effective and inexpensive way to prevent diarrheal diseases, infections, and pneumonia, hand washing can save millions of lives every year. In North America alone, nearly 3 million bars of hotel soap are discarded every day after minimal use. Kayongo ’s idea was to recycle them into new bars and distribute them to those in need. In its first three years, the Global Soap Project sent more than 25 tons of soap to 20 vulnerable countries, relying on volunteers, non-profit organizations, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to get things off the ground. Now the project has been joined by Hilton Worldwide. The hotel company promises to donate more than 1 million new bars of soap and will invest $1.3 million in the project, along with its own operational expertise to help it expand.
1. One observer notes that the Global Soap Project appears to be a good fit with Hilton’s existing sustainability efforts. Why might that be true of a hotel chain?
2. Which organization will benefit more from their partnership, the Global Soap Project or Hilton? Why?