Eco-Soap Bank: Creating a positive impact on health, environmental and economic issues

75% of families in Cambodian rural communities lack access to basic hygiene necessities. It’s shocking to hear, but what’s also stunning is that for the entire country there are only three fully functioning government hospitals…

Our partner Eco-Soap Bank serves these communities to help reduce the number of hospital visits by providing soap and hygiene lessons to the masses, but that’s not all they’re doing to boost the quality of life in these areas.

Eco-Soap Bank is a humanitarian and environmental nonprofit with a mission to save, sanitize and supply recycled hotel soap for the developing world. It’s focus is not just on soap distribution, but also on reducing waste from the hotel industry (which is often discarded in open areas in Cambodia), educating communities on the importance of hygiene education and hiring local woman who would otherwise not have a reliable source of income.

Your SoapBox purchases fund the amazing work that Eco-Soap Bank does. Not only are you providing soap to those in need, but also support for a positive environmental and economic impact. Because each of your purchases gives back to those in need, organizations like Eco-Soap Bank can continue to create a global impact.

These photos were taken from the latest soap distribution in collaboration with Angkor Hospital for Children at a school in the Kralanh District in Cambodia. Kralanh is not far from the Angkor Wat temples, a huge driver in the tourism industry. Though the temples lay close by, all of the money generated from the tourism does not go to Cambodians or the communities in the countryside that surrounds the temples. This is because of foreign owned hotels and government controlled tourism policies. These policies and foreign businesses do not help the financial hardships in these countryside areas where families are without money to buy luxuries such as soap.

Angkor Hospital for Children is a nonprofit hospital that provides lifesaving medical services for over 150,000 children each year. This hospital is often the only place where people living in the countryside can receive affordable medical services.

Treatments for preventable illness are becoming more and more common as the reason behind hospital visits. So much so that quality of care is being sacrificed to accommodate the quantity of patients. The hospital decided to embark on an outreach program to help Cambodians prevent these types of illness and avoid the costly trips to hospitals. One of the aspects of the program is hand-washing education.

The hand-washing training that Eco-Soap Bank provides is included in the half-day hygiene workshops. Students have fun while learning about the importance of hygiene with their alternative methods such as singing songs and playing games outside to get hands dirty before washing up. After the workshop students are given a bar of soap, which has been recycled from hotels and sanitized, to take home.

Every month, Eco-Soap Bank and Angkor Hospital for Children, as a team, provide soap and training to 22,433 elementary school students, with great thanks to your SoapBox purchases. Your support impacts the way tens of thousands of Cambodian children approach hand washing and paves the way for a healthier livelihood for them.