A 22 year old Dublin entrepreneur has created a collapsible shower meant to aid hygiene in both the festival space and the refugee camp (the question of why these camps don’t have adequately hygienic facilities seems to be a futile one at this point…another reason to punch your local right winger in the face).

Originally intended as a portable sanitation area for festival and event attendees, the savvy philanthropist has stepped it all up a notch offering the product also as a donation to refugees, at a ratio of 1:1. So, with every shower sold to a festival goer, one will also be donated to someone in need. The kit itself contains a standard hygiene pack (soap, razor, toothbrush, etc), as well as a shower curtain, shower head, and 10 liter water reservoir. Also, and perhaps the most telling sign of the products heart, rather than standard written instructions, it bypasses language barriers by using a simple set of images printed directly on the item as insrtuction.

The designer of the shower is John Godfrey, a student at Dublin’s National College of Art and Design, described his intentions behind the project as, “this is a very current solution, a lot more modern, because in the past you had charities asking for money to give to a cause. Nowadays it’s hard to ask people, especially young ones, to give money, because they don’t have any…So giving people something in return for what they’re giving is an attempt to bridge the gap between charity and young people.”

Godfrey’s interest in refugee aid came after a visit to the massive Calais refugee camp. “To say that the conditions there were atrocious is an understatement. What took me aback was the people there, obviously they had been through incredible hardships, and those were people like myself, just in vastly different situations,” he describes of the experience.

Now that the project is designed and ready to go, Godfrey hopes a major manufacturer will back in financially, and have it retail in the $15 range. Let’s hope they do! As Godfrey himself stated to Take Part Magazine, “…some things that you would think are basic human rights”.


Source: Take Part