Soap Glow
Soap Glow is a grassroots, community-led social enterprise based within St Bernard’s Primary School in Coatbridge, founded by primary teacher Karen Shields alongside Amanda Moore. Built from lived experience and local need, Soap Glow was created to ensure no family has to go without the basic essentials many of us take for granted.
We exist to tackle hygiene poverty across Lanarkshire in a practical, compassionate, and sustainable way. Through community partnerships, reverse recycling initiatives, local fundraising, and donated essentials, we create and distribute hygiene support packs to families who need them most. Our work goes beyond providing products — it helps support health, wellbeing, confidence, school attendance, and a sense of dignity for people facing difficult circumstances.
Hygiene poverty is often the hidden side of financial hardship. While food poverty is widely recognised, many families are also silently going without toiletries, sanitary products, cleaning essentials, and other everyday items simply to prioritise food, heating, or rent. In school settings especially, the impact can be significant, affecting confidence, social inclusion, wellbeing, and attendance. For adults, it can also create barriers to employment, confidence, and opportunity.
What makes Soap Glow different is that, while we began within the heart of our local school community, the organisation is continuing to grow into a wider community support network across Lanarkshire. Alongside our hygiene initiatives, we run an inter-generational community café from the parish hall at St Bernard’s, creating a welcoming space where local residents of all ages can connect while helping support our wider projects.
Over time, Soap Glow has naturally developed a growing ecosystem of local support involving schools, businesses, community groups, hospitality venues, healthcare contacts, recycling initiatives, and collection points. Our aim is to build a sustainable, community-embedded model that allows local people and organisations to actively participate in meaningful, visible local impact in a way that is practical, collaborative, and long term.
Soap Glow has grown organically through local action, word of mouth, and strong community partnerships, and we are proud to now be part of the We Love Lanarkshire Business Community Network. As our work continues to evolve beyond its original school setting, we look forward to connecting with businesses and organisations that genuinely care about strengthening community well-being and creating lasting local impact across Lanarkshire.
Health & Wellbeing · Coatbridge