At Showers For All we are committed to providing dignity and hope for our guests in addition to Hygiene. We learn every single guests name and their stories in order to build deeper relationships with them. It is the most special part of what we do, helping others feel seen, known, and loved. Recently, I heard a quote that says, “Distance breeds suspicion, proximity breeds empathy,” by Brian Lawrence and when I heard it I couldn’t help but be reminded about why it is so important to us that our volunteers and our guests, housed and unhoused have a safe space to come to and feel important. For people who are housed they so often have stereotypes for those living outside because people don’t understand how the unhoused become unhoused. When people are standing right in front of you, with a smile and a story, suddenly that barrier and those preconceived ideas start to disappear and can be replaced with empathy.

People just need to know how important they are and that their needs matter. The best part of our teams job is getting to hear stories and ideas every day, all week long. We get to be a sounding board, a place to cry, laugh, sit, and sometimes celebrate small wins.

Our friend Neil, comes to the Showers and Laundry trailer in Civic Center Park, Denver. He came to us the first time with a port in his chest for chemotherapy, Neil had terminal pancreatic cancer. He looked at us and said, it may be a while because I haven’t been able to clean this wound and it keeps getting infected. Through the walls of the trailer we heard him take deep breaths in pain while he carefully cleaned around the port. When he came out, he looked at us with big blue eyes and a big smile on his face. He said, “I will be here every time you are here…when I don’t come you will know I am gone.”
Neil was given the gift of health that day and has every day since. His big smiling face and big laugh will always make us smile.

Neil’s joy for something as simple as a shower is something that I will never take for granted. Being able to provide something as simple as a shower and clean clothes has a greater impact on someone’s day then our team ever imagined.

I am a storyteller, a listener, adventurer and a community builder. I have three incredible kids that I love watching come to life when they find the things that they love. I was always the kid who’s heart would break because of the injustice in the world, the teenager who wanted to figure out a way to make sure everyone was fed and housed, and as an adult someone who was ready to figure out how to bring communities together to do just that.

Before starting Showers For All, I spent ten years working with kids and youth helping them tell their stories and live bravely into who they are and reminding them that no matter what they are deeply loved. When I was student teaching in California I would volunteer on Skid Row, serving meals, distributing water, and sitting with people. I looked around and listened closely, I heard people saying things like, “It has been 8 months since I showered” or “Do you have any clothes, I have been wearing the same ones for months and they are so dirty.” When I looked around I realized that there was a void in hygiene services. My Partner, Kellen had a similar experience in Australia. He is an Audio Engineer by trade and while working there saw a Subaru with a washer and dryer in the trunk. They explained to him that they were doing laundry on the road for those who needed it most.

When Kellen and I started dreaming about how we could create The Dignity Project and Showers For All we had so many ideas about what was important. What we knew was that sometimes, what we (as housed individuals) think is important is different than what people who are unhoused really need. We spent two years talking with people and listening to the things that they longed for or were missing. Lucky for us, Showers and Laundry were at the top of their lists and ours. So we went to work. We did a funding campaign to cover the build of our first trailer. We knew that we could build the trailer ourselves for significantly less money than we could purchase one for (almost $100k cheaper). It was also a priority for us to have showers and laundry on board instead of one or the other. We wanted to ensure that people were able to put clean clothes on clean bodies if they wanted.

Our shower and laundry trailer has two full sized bathrooms, complete with toilets, sinks, outlets, mirrors, and of course a shower. It has all the amenities from home and we provide everything our guests need to have a nice shower. We heard from our guests often that we were one of the few places that provided a warm shower. The trailer also has three washer and dryer units. Our team and volunteers do laundry from start to finish, wash, dry, and fold before we return it. You may be wondering why we fold it, we fold our guests laundry because it is a simple way to remind them how important they are. They deserve folded laundry just like we have. One of our guests Jim received his Laundry back after his first time seeing us, tears filled his eyes and he said, “no one has folded my laundry since my mom did, this is so special. Thank you.” It is simple and takes no time but it has a huge impact.

Our trailers are funded by people in the community through small and large donations, but every single donation matters. We could not operate without the support and generosity of our community. We also run with a staff of three, a very busy staff of three that we hope to grow as our finances allow. This is why our volunteer team is essential, we engage 2-4 volunteers a shift, two shifts a day, four to five days a week. We are hoping to expand to 7 days this year. We are also wrapping up our next trailer build as well so that we can continue to reach people who need them most.

I am incredibly proud of our team. I am proud of our guests who come through every day and share their lives with us. I am proud of how well we survived our first two years as an organization in a pandemic and were able to still serve the community. It is a challenge sometimes to explain to people why auxiliary services like showers and laundry are important while people are waiting for housing, but it is essential too. Our priority as a community should be housing and feeding people but while they wait the unhoused should still be able to get clean and feel good.

I wish everyone could see the faces of our first time guests especially, from the time they walk up to the time they leave. I would love for people to see our return guests and the relationships they are building as well. Community is powerful. Something as simple as a shower and clean clothes can radically change how a person feels about themselves and the way they move through the world. It is more powerful than I think Kellen and I ever knew.

Kellen and I met while we were both working in for a church. Kellen was an Audio Engineer for them and I was building Community and leading outreach efforts. We worked alongside of each other running Saturday evenings and Sunday mornings, creating sacred spaces for the church to enjoy during holidays, and doing so many other things. One late night while we were building, Kellen started asking about the Unhoused population in Denver and we started talking about our past experiences with the Unhoused in California and Australia.

We both knew that our current jobs were great but they weren’t the jobs we wanted to be doing forever and the idea of creating something with a lasting impact for those around us was exciting. We started dreaming. We would eat lunch and talk about Showers and Laundry services. We started creating sketches and lists of things that we needed to do in order to launch something like a mobile laundry and shower trailer, we left post it notes with ideas on each others work spaces, and we would grab chalk and draw the layouts in parking lots so we could see the actual size of the trailer and what we could fit. It was a labor of love to really get this off the ground but our shared passion for solving access to hygiene was exciting. Our shared passion was fun to really see come to life.