Clean the World Delivers Radical Hospitality® Across the Country
July 6, 2022
LavaMaeˣ training shows the Orlando, Florida-based mobile shower provider the path to scaling without burning out employees
The Clean the World Backstory
Clean the World, a social enterprise dedicated to water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) and sustainability, had been providing showers for unhoused people for two years in Clark County, Nevada—home to Las Vegas, and the most populous county in the state—when the team began to strategize on scaling across the country. They had partnered since 2017 with Las Vegas Sands on their Fresh Start WASH & Wellness mobile shower program, designed to connect people experiencing homelessness with the resources they need to transition into permanent housing. At the time, they were able to deliver up to 50 showers a day using a 45-foot semi-truck with four shower stalls, thanks to highly dedicated service manager Kevin Williams, who ran the program six days a week.
As they contemplated the next stage of growth, they wanted another perspective. “We wanted to set up another program and wanted to see what other programs were doing,” says Patricia (Trish) Linde, product director at Clean the World. “So we talked to Kris Kepler [CEO of LavaMaeˣ] and said, ‘Listen, we’d love to learn what you guys are doing. It seems so comprehensive.’”
In July 2019, Trish and Sandie Beauchamp, Clean the World’s chief experience officer, flew to LavaMaeˣ’s Bay Area headquarters for an immersive three-day training session.
How LavaMaeˣ helped: Modeling a healthy workplace
During their visit, Trish and Sandie shadowed LavaMaeˣ’s then-mobile service manager, Annie Stickel, observing the organization’s mobile shower services at the San Francisco Public Library’s Main branch and in Oakland, California. One of the first things they noticed was that LavaMaeˣ had three staff members at each site, compared to the one staff member they had running the mobile shower in Las Vegas. They walked through the warehouse with Annie and learned the ins and outs of LavaMaeˣ’s operations manual. They also learned about Radical Hospitality®, LavaMaeˣ’s ethos of meeting people wherever they are and treating them as cherished guests.
Trish and Sandie saw that LavaMaeˣ was doing a terrific job in an area Clean the World was prioritizing: caring for their staff and creating an emotionally healthy workplace to prevent burnout. Part of Trish and Sandie’s visit fell on a Wednesday, the day LavaMaeˣ takes a break from weekly shower service to perform maintenance on equipment, gather as a team for a meal and talk about the challenges they’re facing.
This is crucial, Kris says, because staff often experience “secondary trauma” from seeing such suffering on the streets and bearing witness to such pain. LavaMaeˣ also provides a mental health counselor, free of charge, to help employees manage these challenges.
“At the time, Clean the World had one service manager in Las Vegas who was running everything,” Kris says, “and so for them to come and see how we scheduled the staffing, scheduled our week, and what we did to take care of our employees was really important as they were figuring out how to scale to other cities.”
With an expansion into Orange County, Florida, on the horizon, Trish and Sandie wanted to scale their staff support. “We value our staff and their role can be stressful. We didn’t want burnout and we didn’t want churn,” Trish says. “We took back with us the idea of how important it is to have a mentally healthy team and to be a place where each person who works on this street outreach program is healthy and feels supported.”
She says, “When workers feel supported, they stay in their jobs—and that continuity is crucial when staff are trying to build trust with our shower guests.”
Trish and Sandie so valued their time with LavaMaeˣ that four months later they sent Kevin for two days of one-on-one mentoring with the LavaMaeˣ team.
Impact and success: Increased scaling is making an impact on homelessness
Clean the World’s visit came at a crucial point in its growth path, and the organization has since become one of the fastest-growing and largest mobile shower service providers to have received LavaMaeˣ consulting. After expanding to Florida in 2020, the organization brought its Fresh Start WASH & Wellness mobile shower program to King County, Washington, in 2021, and expanded to Aurora, Colorado, in March 2022. Clean the World now has three mobile showers serving Clark County, Nevada. Kevin is now the enterprise’s implementation manager, traveling around the country to launch new programs and train staff.
Because of their experience at LavaMaeˣ, Trish and Sandie also increased Clean the World’s staffing from one to two people at each site. They paused shower services on Wednesdays to give employees time to recharge. They also set up weekly virtual meetings to allow their geographically dispersed staff to gather and discuss the challenges they face. Today, like LavaMaeˣ, they offer mental health counseling and support through company-based insurance.
Clean the World works in partnership with local governments and nonprofits, providing a variety of wrap-around services at every shower service. Teams also use the Homeless Management Information System to log and collect aggregate data on the people they serve. This not only serves as a coordinated point of entry, but also helps Clean the World track successes. “We try to be the connecting factor,” Trish says, “between people experiencing homelessness and the supportive services that can help them transition into more stable, sheltered environments.”
Since 2017, Clean the World has provided 33,434 showers and distributed 45,000 hygiene kits through the Fresh Start WASH & Wellness program. Over the last five years in Las Vegas, Clean the World’s efforts have contributed to a 35% reduction in Southern Nevada’s homelessness from 2017 to 2021.
Trish credits LavaMaeˣ with providing the practical tools and invaluable insight Clean the World needed to support its staff during rapid growth. “We appreciate what we learned when we were there,” Trish says. “We’ve grown enormously and put our own branding and company culture in all that we do, but we definitely value the groundwork they laid down, especially what we took with us about the health and safety of our employees, so we could build a better program.”
Clean the World visiting LavaMaeˣ in 2019. Photo by LavaMaeˣ. From left to right: Sandie Beauchamp, Annie Stickel, Trish Linde
Clean the World profile
Home base: Orlando, Florida, with additional offices in Las Vegas, Montreal, London, Hong Kong, Amsterdam, and Punta Cana, Dominican Republic
Team: 14 full-time staff working on the Fresh Start WASH & Wellness Program
Mobile shower units: Six total—three trailers in Clark County, Nevada, and one each in Orange County, Florida; King County, Washington; and Aurora, Colorado. Each trailer has four shower and toilet stalls, one of which is ADA accessible
Services: Showers are offered four or four and a half days a week, depending on the location
Showers provided: 33,434 as of May 2022
Hygiene supplies distributed: 45,000 as of May 2022