Have you ever heard of Derreck Kayongo? I had not until I began reading a book published recently called “Visual Intelligence.” According to the book, the author, Amy Herman, has taught the FBI, the State Department, Fortune 500 companies, and the military how to hone their “visual intelligence,” which is described as the ability to better see and understand details of what’s going on around you.
There’s an anecdote in the book about Derreck Kayongo. Kyongo was born in Uganda just as Idi Amin’s dictatorship began. As violence spread through the country and civil war erupted, Kayongo and his family became refugees in Kenya. He later immigrated to America to attend university.
On his first day in America, Derreck Kayongo was preparing to take a shower in his hotel when he discovered the many different kinds of soap in his room: hand soap, face soap, body soap, shampoo, conditioner. He had never seen so much soap for one person! After a few days, he began to wonder what happened to the partially used soap that disappeared from his room each day. Unlike the slivers of soap used in the African refugee camps he had grown up in, the bar from his shower was fairly substantial; it seemed almost brand new after he had used it.
He asked the concierge what happened to the old bars and was shocked to hear they were thrown away. In Kayongo’s mind this was a waste no one could afford, not when he knew more than two million people, most of them toddlers, still died every year from diarrheal disease, a condition that was easily prevented by washing one’s hands with soap. Soap was a luxury item in Africa that many could not afford, yet in America it was simply thrown away. Kayongo then decided to try to do something with what he found to help his old country: he drove to local hotels and asked if he could have their used soap.
Kayongo found a recycling facility to scrape, melt and disinfect the bars of soap he collected. He and his wife Sarah eventually created a life-changing international aid organization that collects discarded soap from hotels, reprocesses it and distributes it to vulnerable populations worldwide. This simple idea fights the #1 killers of children in many at-risk communities: hygiene-related diseases. Active in 32 countries, Global Soap has given millions of bars of soap to refugees and people affected by natural disasters like the earthquakes in Haiti and Nepal. Global Soap recently partnered with Clean the World. These organizations have contributed to an amazing 30% reduction in child deaths, globally, since 2009 and are expanding Kayongo’s original vision to include micro-loans and training for soap makers in communities around the world. In fact, the city of Atlanta designated May 5 as annual Global Soap Project Day.
What do we learn from this story? Solutions to difficult problems can come from being able to really see and paying attention to details that you may often go unnoticed.
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