Never look down on someone, unless you are helping them up!
About Us
We are based in Consett, Co. Durham. In 2018, two of us started a branch of The Red Box Project in our area. We supplied sanitary products to local schools. This was a much-needed service to help alleviate period poverty, but in 2020, the government decided to step in and take over this, thus rendering The Red Box Project redundant.
We didn't feel that it was over, and we didn't want to just let it go at that. Having worked in a food bank, we knew that the poverty crisis was worsening and we needed to try and help with it. During the Covid 19 Lockdown we got our heads together (virtually of course) and came up with the idea of personal and home hygiene care packs.
In 2021 The Just Love Project was born in the kitchen of our Chair's house, using her dining table to pack on, with more storage being held at our Treasurer's house - not ideal, but it worked!
We knew that as the crisis got worse for people, they would have to choose food as a priority of course, but this meant that hygiene would suffer. From speaking to a lot of people on this, we discovered that it was greatly affecting people's mental well-being. Not only was the lockdown isolation taking its toll, but not being able to wash their hair or clean their house properly was making people feel really low, and when the lockdown lifted, they didn't want to interact socially because they felt so self-conscious about their appearance, etc, they stayed home.
We are working with local community outlets to help people get back into the community and to social events, to help them feel good about themselves and to be able to go to school and not have to keep their hoods up because their hair is greasy or they don't have sanitary products.
Since we started in 2021, we have helped over 9,500 people in our area with the care packs, and we are striving to help a lot more.
