WASHINGTON–A new American immigrant, Derreck Kayongo had never stayed in a hotel before.
After three days of taking the soap and hiding it in his luggage only to find it replaced the next day, he went to the hotel’s concierge to confess to his crime and ask that he not be billed.
The conversation that followed led to what today is a $10-million business that is saving the lives of countless people, especially children—and which he said also has a similar mission to that of credit unions.
Kayongo is founder of the Global Soap Project which recycles used hotel soap and redistributes it to poor populations around the world. A CNN Top 10 Hero in 2011, he is also the CEO of the National Center for Civil and Human Rights and was the opening keynote speaker at CUNA’s Governmental Affairs Conference here.
Kayongo’s effusive, positive message and outgoing personality belie a childhood shaped by horrors certainly never experienced by anyone in the credit union audience. Growing up in Uganda he described his childhood as idyllic, with prosperous parents and private schools, until dictator Idi Amin came to power. He shared the story of soldiers arriving in his village and rounding up everyone as a commander announced that two of his men had been killed and he was going to find out who did it.
“He said, ‘We’re going to have a firing squad,’ and at random he picked people out, one, two, three four, and he brought them up. He pulls out his pistol, asks them if they did it to no avail again, and shoots all four of them. There was crying and it was unbelievable. He said ‘Be quiet, we’re going to do this all day until we figure out what happened.’ He picked four more people out, and by then neighbors were pointing at each other. Four more shots rang out. That was eight. He picked out another four and then a man at the back raised his hand and says he did it. And we realized this man was a visitor to the village and there was no way he could have done it. I closed my eyes, and I heard that bullet.”
Come Clean, America: Why Three Bars of Soap?
And out of that, Kayongo shared, began the journey that brought him to America. His prosperous family left the village, and fled Uganda to a refugee camp. There he was selected to attend school in Philadelphia, where he had that first stay in an American hotel.
“In this country there are three bars of soap, facial soap, body soap and handwashing soap. What’s the difference? Nothing,” laughed Kayongo, who still sounded amazed by the experience. “It’s Americans being ‘bourgie.’ And then I get it: you guys will sell anything to anybody who’s not paying attention.”
When Kayongo visited with that hotel concierge to come clean on his crime, the concierge, who was African American, gave a hearty laugh, according to Kayongo, and explained that new soap is delivered to hotel rooms every day.
“As I’m walking away the thought comes to me, ‘What about all these bars of soap? What do they do with them?’ He told me ‘We throw them out’,” he recalled. “So I want to walk you through what it means to take a story like that and use that story to actually change the world. Very often we go through things in our lives and we get defeated. We very seldom say, ‘This is going on but I can use it for something’.”
Kayongo would go on to learn that American hotels throw away 800 million bars of soap every day.
“In juxtaposition, we lose two-million kids every year to diseases like diarrhea from hands being dirty, or midwives not washing their hands,” he said. “So what can a new American do? For me, rather than complain, I said, we can recycle it, and we started the Global Soap Project.”
How It Works
The Global Soap Project collects soap from participating hotels and then brings it to processing facilities where volunteers sort it by color and then peel off the outer layers. What it doesn’t do is boil the soap, he said, explaining that changes the chemical composition.
It then places the peeled soap in airtight bags to suffocate any germs, before adding some moisture, placing it in a machine to heat it, and creating new bars of soap. It also sends some of the soap to Proctor and Gamble in Cincinnati, which tests it for cleanliness. From there it is shipped to countries in Africa, Latin America and Asia.
“When we land in Africa, that’s where the fun begins. In Kenya, the mothers smell it and dance and sing,” he said, before laughing and adding, “Then, if you are lucky, they give you their daughter to marry.” He said education is very often required in Africa where hand washing often doesn’t take place, especially by young boys. “In Africa, food is made by hand and eaten by hands, and that is reason people fall sick, because they don’t wash their hands.”
The Global Soap Project has three factories, including in hotel-heavy Orlando and Las Vegas.
“And that’s the really remarkable part of this business. That’s what you guys are doing as an association of credit unions. You are people in the business of helping people.”
Kayongo, who is now an American citizen, said that part of being an American is to not complain without having a functional result.
“Part of being an American is doing something remarkable. I resolved to be practical and to be part of the solution.”
One Man's Motto
Kayongo said his motto is SELF:
- Service: “You can never do anything remarkable in a community without serving.”
- Education. “The yuk factor is what people don’t want to talk about it. But that’s where the business is. I went in and we figured out how to make soap clean.”
- Leadership. “If you’ve never served, it’s very hard to be a leader.”
- Faith. “I have faith in my employees all the time, in their intuition, in their ability to create. If you are a leader without faith, it’s hard to have people trust you, as well. What do you really believe in? What does your model look like?”
In building his business Kayongo said he had to figure out how to operationalize his idea and make it work. He pitched collecting soap to the Hilton Corp., for instance, which told him it was a nice story but it would not be providing the $1.3 million in funding he was seeking. So he said he went back and figured out how much it cost Hilton to move all the soap it was throwing away each year, and after returning to Hilton, “I left that afternoon with a check for $1.3 million.”
“Innovation and the courage to go back and innovate around an idea is a constant process,” he told GAC.
The Challenge for Credit Unions
Kayongo, whose business now has revenues of $10 million annually and operates in 90 countries, said he also initially thought he would have to work with hotel general managers, because he believed they held the power.
“But do you know who really has the power? Housekeeping. Who’s in housekeeping? Mamas. And where are they from? Other parts of the world and they understand really, really well. And when I told them my story they were crying. When you connect people to the business idea, it has a lot of buy in.”
That’s the challenge for credit unions, said Kayongo, who is a member of Associated Credit Union in Atlanta.
“People helping people. How does your business connect people? How do you connect to your community? Are you in this for real? Is your credit union in the business of helping people for real? If so, my story should encourage you to stay the course. Minus that, you will not feel that spiritual experience when you connect to another person through your business. Thank you for America for having faith in Dereck Kayongo.”