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photos by Destinee Stark Photography
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Destinee Noelle Jackson
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photos by Destinee Stark Photography
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photos by Destinee Stark Photography
There was a pit in Nathan Walden’s stomach as he stared at a bowl of steaming pasta on a January evening in 2012. He remembered his homeless friends he sat with at church hours earlier, who were spending the below-zero night outside. He thought, What are they going to eat?
For a year, Walden had been giving cold lunches to the homeless weekly through the Love Truck, a nonprofit he founded to serve the homeless. “I started crying. How dare I continue to give out sandwiches to people who have nothing,” says the owner of Hope Soap Ohio.
From then on, he refocused the Love Truck to serve heartier hot food, from baked chicken to grilled mashed potatoes. Walden and volunteers also started assisting people with finding employment by helping write resumes, giving them professional clothing and offering health checkups through the Summit County Health Department. They began giving out hygiene products, too.
“There’s a lot of hurdles people experiencing homelessness face that lead to skin problems and other health issues,” Walden says. “You have no place to go in the wintertime, you’re icy, cold and getting chapped. In the summer it’s hot, you’re sweating, and you can’t always wash your hands.”
Around that time, Walden began researching how to make soap that would soothe his dermatitis — no medications, soaps or creams helped his inflamed and itchy skin.
“I was scratching [in] my sleep. I would wake up with blood on my pillow,” he says.
After spending hours learning from YouTube, he began crafting natural soaps, and his first batch cured his dermatitis. Hope Soap was born, and shops opened in Akron’s Northside Marketplace in 2018 and Cuyahoga Falls in 2019. A portion of the proceeds funds the Love Truck nonprofit, which doesn’t have a truck yet but hosts distribution events the last Saturday of every month at the Congregational Church of Akron.
“My past skin issues combined with my passion to serve the homeless is what birthed my business,” Walden says. “Hope Soap’s mission has always been every item we sell, we give a bar of soap to someone in need.”
Hope Soap now has over 300 products, from natural hair oils to lotions, like his best-selling The Sauce, a shea butter and aloe vera moisturizer. All products are made from natural ingredients sourced fair trade as much as possible. The base of the soaps is coconut oil, olive oil, shea butter and sustainable palm oil he gets from farms. He adds extra ingredients for different effects, like oatmeal and local honey that make the Oatheal body bar soothing. The band around the soaps has wildflowers that you can plant, and if you recycle five packages at the Cuyahoga Falls location, you receive a free bar.
This all comes back to Walden’s mission of quality and the notion that good hygiene products are not a luxury, they are a necessity. That’s why he gives Hope Soap products at Love Turck events and tailors the selection to individual needs. He asks, Do you want to take any food to go? Would you like lavender or mint soap? What’s your skin like?
“The first step to making a difference is for them to feel loved,” he says.
During the COVID-19 crisis, Walden stepped up to assist the community even more. Hope Soap partnered with local boutique Reverie to donate 200 care packages with its soaps, lotions and lip balms to Western Reserve Hospital staff. Hope Soap also donated $1,500 worth of its hand sanitizer to the Akron and Cuyahoga Falls police departments and the homeless community. In addition, he upped his food distributions to every week.
Walden has assisted so many others over the years, like a single mother who fled domestic violence and went to the Love Truck for months. Walden helped her find employment and make a down payment on an apartment. She got on her feet and now volunteers with the Love Truck. This isn’t unusual.
“There’s multiple people that came back. I’ve had them walk in and hand me $20,” Walden says. “They’ll say, I had no food for two days and you fed me. I want to give back.”
Walden and volunteers have served over 89,000 plates of food, and he’s seen the impact it’s made in Akron — one that all started with a chilly night nine years ago.
“Every time that I would go through a season of I’m going to give up or I can’t do this, I would go to a Love Truck event. It would totally reignite me with my passion,” he says. “It’s always been about serving people — they need to feel important because they are.”
2101 Front St., Cuyahoga Falls, hopesoapohio.org
