Guelph pilot project brings beauty services to people experiencing homelessness

A pair of Guelph organizations have teamed up to bring beauty services to the streets of Guelph for people experiencing homelessness.

It’s part of a new pilot project aimed at providing community-based care for those in need.

Beauty 2 The Streets was launched by The Kween Company and Your Downtown Friends. The initiative offers everything from beauty services like hair, makeup and nails, as well as printing services or tent supplies.

On Sunday, Your Downtown Friends held its fourth annual Care Café and Holiday Market at the Guelph Community Health Centre.

"There's a free gift market, everyone's getting a $5 Tim Hortons gift card, and some products from Lush," said Katherine Nixon, director of Your Downtown Friends.

This year, beauty products were offered to the community by Kween.

"Whether that be through makeup services, getting your haircut, maybe you need a nail kit to take home," said Kween, the CEO of the company. "This is about bringing that love and care we put into ourselves everyday into our streets and into the people we care about too.

"Walking by downtown past the Royal City Mission, who also does amazing work, and seeing one of the women put on their press nails, I said 'I do that.' We do these things for ourselves and then forget how many people need that too."

The Kween Company plans to work with regional and provincial partners to keep everyone feeling beautiful, regardless of individual circumstance.

"I think often people look at people's situations and make these stigmas and assumptions not recognizing that I could easily be a month away from that," said Kween.