Refugee in America brings soap to Uganda

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A man who moved to the U.S. from Africa is launching an extraordinary act of kindness.

Derreck Kayongo is a refugee from Uganda who has lived in the Metro Atlanta area for nearly two decades. He has just launched the Global Soap Project, aimed at bringing soap to refugees overseas who have very little of it in supply.

“This whole process,” Kayongo says, “is about how we can take this incredible resource in the U.S. — soap — and transfer it into something people could have to bathe with.”

So far, Kayongo’s organization has amassed roughly six tons of soap; that’s roughly 100,000 bars. They get the soap from local hotels that have agreed to be a part of the program. The bars are leftovers — the ones that would normally be thrown out.

Kayongo’s plan is to clean the bars, melt them down into new ones, and send them back to Africa.

“It’s gonna be cleaned and heated up to very hot temperatures,” Kayongo says. “The process is going to be very professional and very clean, and the byproduct will be a new bar of soap.”

The issue at this point is equipment; Kayongo doesn’t have it yet, and it costs a lot of money. He is hoping folks will be willing to donate to his cause.