HIGH WYCOMBE, London – A young British Muslim entrepreneur has raised the Christmas spirits in a small UK town by opening his launderette to the homeless and providing them free services and blankets.
“It was very cold last week – the temperatures dropped massively- so I thought let’s go and get some waterproof duvets and hand them out,” Qamar Aziz, who owns The Laundry Room in High Wycombe, told Metro.co.uk.
“So we went out on Saturday and gave out 40 to 50 blankets in different areas of the town. It was amazing to see just how much they appreciated it.
“A lot of these people weren’t alcoholics or drug addicts or anything, they had just been brought into that situation or fallen on hard times.”
Aziz, from High Wycombe, a town northwest of London, started to offer free laundry services last February after being inspired by a homeless man outside his shop.
“He was standing outside for two or three hours and I felt so bad for him,” Aziz recalled.
The kind-hearted shop owner offered his service for free and quickly realized others may be in a similar situation so decided to open it up to others.
“I approached a charity called Wycombe Homeless Connection and basically said, “this is our idea, we’d like to offer it to other homeless people”. They offered a token system where anyone in need could get the tokens from them and they could use them for free in our launderette,” he said.
Qamar, whose initiative has helped over 400 rough sleepers in the last year, is happy to help the needy.
“It doesn’t really cost much for me at all – just seeing the smile on their face is the best feeling.”