What Serving Humanity Means to Me

I often think back to something one of my favorite professors said. He attended an unconventional college called Deep Springs, where students live on a remote ranch and spend their days balancing manual labor with an intense liberal arts education. The school’s founder left students with one lifelong challenge: to devote our lives to serving humanity. Since hearing that, I’ve carried those words as a quiet mantra—constantly asking myself how I can make a difference. I’ve thought about the many ways that could be interpreted. What does it really mean to make an impact? Does it have to be something big and influential, or can it come from small, intentional changes?

For me, service means addressing both the visible and invisible hardships that people face daily. That’s what drew me to Kindness Kits, an organization that embodies compassion through action—providing essential hygiene, self-care, and beauty products to those in need while simultaneously diverting waste and promoting sustainability. Kindness Kits represents a simple yet powerful model of how social and environmental missions can intersect. The personal care and beauty industry contributes significantly to waste in the U.S., where up to 40% of consumer goods go unused each year, even when they’re perfectly usable. A 2022 report by Zero Waste Week found that the global beauty industry produces 120 billion units of packaging every year, most of which is not recyclable. Many of these products—lotions, soaps, shampoos, clothing items—are discarded simply because of seasonal marketing changes, slight imperfections, or rebranding, not because they’re unsafe or unusable.

At the same time, more than 37 million Americans live below the poverty line, and over 500,000 people experience homelessness on any given night (U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, 2024). Despite this, federal programs like SNAP and WIC do not cover hygiene or personal-care products, leaving millions—especially women and families in shelters—without essentials such as soap, toothpaste, menstrual products, and deodorant. This policy gap places the burden on local nonprofits and shelters to fill a basic human need.

Having access to personal-care and beauty products does more than meet physical needs—it restores dignity, confidence, and mental well-being. For example, a 2024 survey found that nearly 46% of people in Colorado experienced hygiene poverty (the inability to afford essential personal and household hygiene products), and among that group, about 40% reported struggling to get a job because of hygiene-related limitations. Roughly 80% said that hygiene poverty harmed their mental health. Similarly, a 2025 qualitative study of providers working with unhoused populations described how limited access to menstrual products, hygiene facilities, and clean clothing fosters shame, undermines self-care, and creates barriers to employment or stable housing.

These findings demonstrate that when individuals lack access to items such as soap, deodorant, shampoo, laundry detergent, or menstrual supplies, the consequences extend beyond hygiene: they affect self-esteem, capacity to interview for jobs, willingness to engage with social services, and ultimately the odds of exiting homelessness. Our work shows what’s possible when communities, businesses, and individuals collaborate to solve systemic issues such as resource inequality, homelessness, and environmental overproduction through small, practical acts of kindness. Serving humanity doesn’t require grand gestures; sometimes it begins with something as simple as sharing what we already have.