Solace Women’s Aid x Leiho Wellbeing Day
In honour of Mental Heath Awareness Week, on Thursday 18th May we partnered with the charity Solace Women’s Aid to host a Wellbeing Day for their refuge residents across London.
Solace Women’s Aid supports vulnerable women and children in London, helping to build safe and strong lives and futures free from male abuse and violence. They support thousands of women and children each year, through accommodation, advice and support and therapeutic support.
We with Solace, at the gorgeous Union Chapel in Islington, opened the doors to over 30 women and children during the day to take part in a host of wellbeing-focused activities. We were honoured to be able to create a safe space to bring so many women together. As Poppy from Solace said ‘Wellbeing is such an important, and unfortunately often overlooked, part of healing and recovery from trauma so I know that the refuge staff were so pleased to be able to offer this to their residents.’
With help from our wonderful volunteers, we had a mini nail painting salon, crafty DIY sweater making, multiple yoga and meditation sessions during the day from our very own Bella (Yoga by Bella), luxury goody bags for the women to take home, along with a luxury beauty products and clothing donation shop and delicious hot meals made by Emily Warbuton-Adams of Pow Foods. We donated a total of 40 care packages and over 550 items of essentials on the day!
We would like to thank all of our wonderful sponsors, Nivea for all the beauty and haircare products, Hu Chocolate, HumaniTea, Karma Drinks, The Den Kit Company for the children’s nature kits and Afternoon Crumbs for the sweaters, Pow Food for the hot meals, any of our Leiho community who donated items and of course our fabulous volunteers - we couldn’t have done it without you!
Although we can’t share many photos from the day as we need to be sensitive with photography, here are some quotes about the day from our lovely volunteers.
"I would say like for me, I didn’t know what to expect going into it but the Leiho team were so welcoming and the whole event was so well set up. It was such a great opportunity to support Solace and meet the women that they work with. Huge credit to Leiho for putting in the work to set these events up that are so well tailored to their audience, can’t wait to get involved with the next one!" - Patsie
"The event helped these ladies form connections and create a community around them, unwind and relax, and stock up on essential toiletries that would otherwise be out of reach for them. Safe to say, this was an incredibly touching and heartwarming event where we got to meet some very inspiring ladies!" - Vanessa
"This was the best way to spend a Thursday. Such a well executed event by the team at Leiho. You could see the incredible impact it was having for the women that attended first hand. They all left with huge smiles on their faces with lots of goodies to nourish their body, mind and soul. I couldn’t recommend volunteering with this team more and can’t wait to see hear about their future events." - Susanna
We are so grateful for a successful wellbeing day and hope to do more of these in the upcoming months. In the meantime, please subscribe to our email newsletter to stay up to date with our latest impact news, events as well as promos on products that help fund impact days like these.
Written by Bella Hayward