Hygiene gives a person dignity and with dignity comes opportunities – a tenet that a previous marketing executive believes in. Thus she started Lava Mae, a shower-on-wheels project to help the homeless in San Francisco.
In 2013, there were close to 6,500 homeless people in San Francisco, a city that is unofficially tagged as one of the country’s homeless capitals. About 4,300 people in the city are living on the street, literally. Access to shower facilities is one of the many problems faced by them, as there are only about 16 to 20 shower facilities across the city, which are not enough to accommodate all of them.
A passing chance
Doniece Sandoval, who used to be a marketing executive, decided to quit her job to start a project that she named Lava Mae, which aims to provide mobile shower stations for the homeless in her neighborhood.
Her project came about when she passed by a very dirty woman and heard her saying that she might never be truly clean. Sandoval thought that those words could convey several meanings but she latched on to the idea about being “hygienically clean.” She added that the restoration going on in her neighborhood had pushed many people onto the streets, literally and that included her neighbor Mr. Earl. She said that the kindly man was a Vietnam veteran and he would stop by and chat with her and her daughter once in a while. However, he was evicted from his home and was forced to live on the street.
Lava Mae
Sandoval did some research and found organizations and agencies that could help her with the project. A decommissioned bus was donated by the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, which also promised that if the project were successful, it would be donating three more buses. After many trials and errors on how to convert and outfit the bus with two shower stalls and the equipment for hot and cold water and drainage, the showers-on-wheels bus was finally rolled out. Lava Mae was allowed to get water from fire hydrants, based on Sandoval’s agreement to pay the Public Utilities Commission for the consumed water. This is of great help because it reduced the load that the bus would have to haul, if it had to carry tanks of water.
The Housing Opportunity, Partnership and Engagement director, Bevan Duffy, is one of the major supporters of the Lava Mae project. The organization is under the office of the city mayor. Duffy, who lauds Sandoval for her willingness to help the homeless in the city also sees other opportunities for the mobile shower facility, which could be deployed during emergency situations.
Copyright: terex / 123RF Stock Photo
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