On Saturday 9th December (2017), one of the biggest mass sponsored sleep outs was organised in Princess Street Gardens, Edinburgh, as part of ongoing fundraising efforts to end the vicious cycle of homelessness – a project called Social Bite Village.
The sleepout was so successful that over 8,000 people participated in the event in temperatures as low as -8ºC, raising an incredible £3.6m to aid the fight against homelessness.
The Social Bite Village, one of Social Bite’s many endeavours, is a project that combines an innovative housing model using vacant council owned land, alongside a supportive community environment. The whole project is geared at breaking the cycle of homelessness and giving residents pathways into both employment and permanent housing.
The sponsored sleepout was organised to help support and raise the necessary funds for the Social Bite Village – a low cost and safe living environment for up to 20 people for around 12–18 months. After the 12-18 months Social Bite will help transition the residents into permanent accommodation, alongside providing pathways to mainstream employers to help support their journey back into society.
Through the Robertson Group, a company who embarked on this project at no cost from themselves, Don & Low were kindly asked to be involved to help supply geotextile materials for the project. In light of the project requirements we were able to donate Lotrak® 20/20S and Lotrak® 100 as part of a material request; alongside additional materials from Marshalls, Marley and Wrekin.
Lotrak® 20/20S is a biaxial geogrid designed to provide good ground stabilisation and reinforcement. The high strength of Lotrak® 20/20S combined with low elongation provides effective reinforcement, while the aperture design of the geogrid allows the aggregate to interlock and encourages load dispersal. Lotrak® 100, on the other hand, is a mechanically bonded nonwoven geotextile with market established technical and hydraulic properties – addressing the industry requirements of separation and filtration. Acting as an effective separator beneath granular materials, Lotrak® 100 prevents the loss of construction aggregates into the underlying soil. These characteristics make both geotextiles ideally suited to the groundworks for the Social Bite project.
The Social Bite Village is expected to be complete by early/mid-2018, although the start of building for the project has already begun with the groundworks being laid on site this week.
We’re absolutely thrilled to be able to support such an incredible social business in Scotland and to be a part of such a life-changing project is a great honour. We can’t wait to see the complete project and the first village residents next year!
For more informaiton on Social Bite and the Social Bite Village visit: Social Bite
For more information on the Robertson Group visit: Robertson Group