Shower bus for homeless people in Hamburg

What most people take for granted is an unimaginable luxury for some in our society: a warm shower after a long day. Dominik Bloh was homeless for a long time and knows the hardships of life on the streets. Together with others, he founded GoBanyo, the shower bus for people without shelter. In this interview, he tells us how he managed to get off the streets and why washing should be a human right.

Hey Dominik, nice to see you. Tell us a little about yourself and your story.

My name is Dominik. I'm an author and activist. I became homeless as a teenager. For ten years, that was the central theme of my life. Until I made it off the streets and into my own apartment in 2016.
On the streets, I always felt so dirty that at some point I thought I was dirt myself. That's why I had the idea of ​​bringing a shower bus to the streets. A place where homeless people could wash themselves for free. This idea became a reality with GoBanyo in 2019.

How did you manage to get off the streets?

At some point on the streets, I no longer believed I would live to be 30. I thought I would die before then. And because I didn't want that, I decided that something had to change. That was definitely an intrinsic motivation. But people can only go so far on their own, and then they need others. I was lucky to have someone in my life who helped me. He found me an apartment and paid the rent for a year. That's the Housing First principle. It changed my life, and I believe that Housing First can be a path out of homelessness for all people who still have to live on the streets today.
Another motivation, and certainly one of the reasons why I never gave up, was writing. I always wrote. It was like a form of self-therapy for me. And it was a way to let out and express what I experienced and what I suffered on a daily basis.

Showering is something completely simple for most of us. Why do you think it's so important?

I firmly believe that showering is a basic human need and that everyone should have the right to it. You don't have that on the street. You lose a lot of things because of it. It's not just the external dirt that constantly sticks to you – it's more about the internal and the loss of self-esteem because you constantly feel dirty. A shower helps to switch off all these feelings, at least for a moment. Anyone who has just showered feels clean and comfortable in their own skin. And that is exactly the moment when people come out of our bathrooms with their heads held high and their backs straight again. That can give them the strength they need to say, 'I dare to enter the support system now. To get a job. To look for a job. To view an apartment.' Showering is help for self-help.

The shower bus was made possible through the GoBanyo project. Tell us a little about GoBanyo.

GoBanyo is a non-profit organization. This means we are not profit-driven; what we do is for the common good. This is precisely how we see our work. We want to give something back to society and to those who are particularly struggling in our society. Our mission is to provide people with access to sanitation facilities. This is our first priority. Our vision, of course, encompasses even more: namely, to end homelessness. The shower bus is a means to an end; in the long term, we want people to no longer have to shower on the street, but rather everyone to have access to their own bathroom.

How can you support GoBanyo?

We have a lot planned for the future, and we need a lot of help. The most important thing for us are people who can help us with the bus and ensure that people on the street have the opportunity to shower. If you're interested in volunteering, please connect with GoBanyo. And if you don't have time for that, you can of course also support us. As a non-profit organization, we rely on donations. This also supports our work. Anyone who wants to can get involved and do good.

How can you imagine a shower bus?

Our shower bus is a converted bus, similar to the ones you'd find on public transport. It has three fully equipped bathrooms. It has everything you need: shower, toilets, sinks, and a mirror. We want our visitors to feel like they're in a proper bathroom and can use everything. We're also barrier-free, meaning anyone can come and see us. It goes without saying that we're free of charge. The whole thing works very simply: the bus is equipped with a fresh water tank and a waste water tank. At the end of the day, all we need is electricity and water. Of course, we have hot water—we've been asked about that a few times. Our visitors are also given clean clothes, so they don't have to slip back into their old, smelly clothes after showering.

We're out and about in Hamburg five days a week, at various locations. We're on-site from morning to afternoon. We see how great and urgent the need for sanitary facilities is—for example, 30 people showered with us yesterday. Of course, we want to continue providing access to sanitary facilities for everyone.