Linens N Love: One man’s trash is another man’s treasure
A 501(c)3 nonprofit organization founded in 2014 by two sisters to catalyze change in the world with the power of linens and leadership.
Website: www.LinensNLove.org
Instagram: www.instagram.com/linensnlove
Points of Light: www.pointsoflight.org/awards/california-teen-reuses-hotel-linens-to-give-back/
Have you ever stayed at a hotel and wondered why everything appears so much nicer than those in your home? How do all the towels, sheets, and blankets look so new and feel so soft?
It turns out most of the hotel linens have a rather short lifespan of six months or less. As soon as there’s a slight perfection, they are destined to be thrown into the landfill because they don’t meet the hotel franchise’s quality standards.
Linens with a small pen mark or the slightest unremovable stain mean it’s headed for the trash pile. As it turns out, a typical hotel easily discards hundreds of linens every year.
For tens of thousands of hotel linens, it must be decided — is there life after being imperfect?
Founded in 2014, Linens N Love is a student-run nonprofit organization cofounded by Vivian Wang and May Wang. Linens N Love is dedicated to collecting and donating to-be-discarded linens from hotels to local shelters, in the form of student-led deliveries and an educational tour of the receiving organization.
As Linens N Love is approaching its sixth year as a nonprofit, Linens N Love has already donated nearly 18,000 linens to various local shelters, with our reach and extent ever-expanding.
Linens N Love’s volunteering actions are sustainable and environmentally friendly. Unlike typical cash donations solicited by most volunteer organizations, we ask for linen donations from local hotels that were planning to discard the items. Donation sources are sustainable, as there are thousands of hotels and they will continue to discard a sizable amount of linens due to daily use.
Deliveries provide a valuable experience in which students learn why sympathy is important, and how they have impacted their local community and reduced landfills.
When hotels discard their linens due to slight imperfections, it negatively impacts our environment as landfills accumulate concerningly high amounts of waste when they could’ve been put to good use. Linens N Love helps to reduce our landfills as we repurpose these linens and provide warmth to shelters.
While promoting volunteering, this organization seeks to redefine our perceptions of volunteerism by incorporating environmental awareness and social responsibility.
For the past five years, students have spread the mission of Linens N Love to more volunteers as we continue to organize deliveries to various shelters, including teenage shelters, women’s shelters, veterans shelters, and animal shelters.
Shweta Shah, the Chapter President of the Valencia Chapter in California reflects on her team of youth leaders at her Chapter, “They consistently want to be involved,” says Shah, outlining the the “double-edged” benefits of Linens N Love as they are saving the earth while reaching out to people in need.
Linens N Love deliveries encompass two main components: packing the linens and then a guided tour. Guided shelter tours and Q&A sessions take place, providing a learning opportunity for the student volunteers to learn exactly how thousands of repurposed linens will be put to good use instead of going to landfills, and how simple actions lead to large impacts.
Students learn the importance of sympathy, which in turn translates into them taking action and stimulating new creative ideas for future service projects.
Linens N Love’s milestone from last year is the Winter Leadership Training & Summit, a youth conference organized by Linens N Love that teaches students essential leadership skills to initiate, build, and lead their own teams of volunteers.
Students met at the conference in late December of 2019 to participate in leadership lectures, deliveries to shelters, team bonding activities, and action planning for 2020.
One of Linens N Love’s larger Chapters encompasses five high schools across Southern California as part of the Southern California Chapter: Valencia, Canyon, Yorba Linda, Portola, and Del Norte High School.
Student leaders of each of the five chapters within the Southern California Chapter lead weekly online conferences to plan future service events. These conferences allow for leaders to effectively plan, provide support and guidance for newer leaders, and share personal experiences by communicating with their members.
Chapter leaders improve their communication skills as they prepare themselves to lead and influence others effectively. This nonprofit organization can do a lot more for the local community due to this growing team of dedicated leaders and volunteers as Linens N Love is growing to nearly 10 chapters across the United States.
Linens N Love creates a network for schools near and far to unite under a common cause of volunteerism, goodwill, and environmental awareness, all while being able to care for and serve their local communities.
One of the benefits of Linens N Love’s model is its geographical extent with student volunteers being located throughout Southern California, which allows them to locate and identify shelters from communities that are closer to their schools.
As Linens N Love is growing and evolving each day, we’re looking towards our future and have expanded globally with our Virtual Volunteering Program. Virtual Volunteers consist of Linens N Love Research Bloggers, Ambassadors, and Project Leaders.
The Linens N Love Virtual Volunteering Program has opened up to our community of over 500 volunteers from over 10 countries around the world to ignite change and shed light on provocative social and environmental issues.
Linens N Love is looking forward to what the rest of 2020 has in store as we’re connecting volunteers from all around the world.
To learn more about Linens N Love or get involved with Linens N Love, follow Linens N Love on Instagram @LinensNLove, visit LinensNLove.org today or email Info@LinensNLove.org.
