Hi, my name is Louis and I work for the fantastic organisation that is St Giles Trust. The organisation works with a variety of different people. 

To help support St Giles Trust I am planning to shave off my hair and beard to a number 1 style. For those who know me my floppy hair is a key part in identifying who I am and without a beard I look about 11! It’s crucial to who I am. 

The money you donate so kindly will be given to a project here at St Giles Trust called Footsteps which works with women with multiple mental health issues, substance misuse, homelessness, and provides a meet at the gate service. This involves meeting female prisoners on their release date to support them to get appointments with housing, benefits and probation - all of which are needed by the women to help to integrate in the community. 

The money will be used to buy a range of nail varnishes to give to the women who use the project. I thought this was important because having had discussions with current serving prisoners they have explained to me the importance about not losing your identity in an environment that can be so destroying to those in it. 

Each of our projects work with women to assist them to build self-esteem and confidence. Through experience this can sometimes be achieved with small ‘tokens’ of ‘normalcy’. By giving them a bottle of nail varnish, this allows them to have a simple way of rebuilding social relationships with family, friends and their children by doing each other’s nails or having their nails done. This involves chatting as well as a tactile experience for both the recipient and giver of the treatment. It is also cheap so the more we can raise together, the more bottles we can give to those we help.

Thanks for taking the time to visit my JustGiving page.

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