A student group at L.V. Rogers is planning to make 50 hygiene kits for people who are homeless in Nelson, with $500 in funding from the Kootenay C0-op.
Student Elsa Sollid said Wednesday the kits will contain basic hygiene products.
“We did an outline of the things we wanted to include, such as toothbrushes, hygiene wipes, razors, menstrual products for the women, a washcloth, reusable water bottle, and the bag is going to be a string bag and it’s also going to be reusable.”
The students developed the idea as part of their membership in the Rotary Club of Nelson Interact group at LVR.
“We were given the statistics on the amount of poverty and homelessness and Nelson, and we’re one of the highest in the area,” said student Olivia Bezaire. “And so we figured that, especially with the cold winter, and the prices are increasing and rising everywhere, that we wanted to do something for the homeless, and the hygiene kits just kind of came to us as something that would be very beneficial.”
The pandemic also played into the decision.
“It just seemed like something that was feasible, in terms of COVID,” said Sollid, “because it didn’t require much interaction between people. We just drop off the kits, and they could pick them up whenever they needed to.”
The students intend to drop the kits off at the Stepping Stones shelter in early March.
The 13th annual Report Card on Homelessness in Nelson published in June 2021 said Nelson’s rental market had a 0.5 per cent overall vacancy rate in 2020. It was the third straight year there were zero vacancies for studio apartments, and the sixth consecutive year of no vacancies for one-bedroom homes.
The report stated that between April 2020 and March 2021, the Stepping Stones Emergency Shelter was 94 per cent occupied by 92 individuals and 3,089 bed stays.
During the same period, 51 people who were either experiencing or at-risk of homelessness lived in a hotel just outside Nelson for a year during the COVID-19 pandemic, supported by staff of Nelson CARES.
Wendy LaCroix, the Nelson Rotary Club member who advises the student group, said that after the students came up with the hygiene kits concept, she checked with staff at the Stepping Stones shelter who told her it was a good idea.
“I love working with youth,” she says. “They have energy. They want to be there. There was a lot of thought behind what they’re doing.”
READ MORE:
• Hourly wage required to live in Nelson rises to $19.56: report
• Annual homelessness report shows pandemic’s impact in Nelson
bill.metcalfe@nelsonstar.com
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