Program 01 · Give care
Small canister, lasting impact.
A tennis ball tube is waterproof, the right shape, and about to be thrown away. Fill it with hygiene essentials, socks and a handwritten note, and it becomes something someone can carry.
Status
Active program
Where
Los Angeles & the Bay Area
Made from
Recycled tennis tubes
Why it exists
Dignity is a hygiene problem more often than anyone admits.
When you don’t have a bathroom of your own, the first things to go are the small ones — a toothbrush, deodorant, clean socks. They’re also the things that decide whether you feel able to walk into a shelter, a clinic, or a job interview.
A Care Canister isn’t a solution to homelessness. It’s a way of handing someone the specific items that let them feel like themselves again, offered by a person rather than left on a step.
How it works
Rubbish in. Dignity out.
Five steps, none of them complicated. That's deliberate — it means a chapter, a class or a club can run the whole loop themselves.
Bins go out to local clubs
Collection bins are placed at tennis and country clubs, where empty ball tubes otherwise go straight to landfill.
Members drop their empties
Players finish a set, drop the tube in the bin, and a piece of rubbish becomes raw material.
Volunteers collect and fill
Tubes are cleaned, then packed with hygiene essentials, socks and a handwritten note at a community packing event.
Canisters travel
Finished canisters are moved to the partners and outreach teams already working in the community.
Hand to hand
A canister is offered — never dropped off. The point is the exchange as much as the contents.
What's inside
Ten things, and one of them isn’t a thing.
The list is fixed for a reason: consistency means a recipient knows what they're getting, and a volunteer knows exactly what to buy.
- Toothpaste & toothbrush
- Deodorant
- Soap or body wash
- Shampoo
- Undergarments
- Cotton pads & Q-tips
- A grooming item (comb, shaving cream, razor)
- Bandaids
- Fingernail clippers
- A handwritten note of encouragement
The part people remember
It's the cheapest thing in the tube, and the one recipients mention most.
Every canister carries one, in someone's own handwriting
The reuse angle
The container was always going to be free.
Tennis clubs go through an enormous number of ball tubes, and almost all of them are thrown out. Collection bins turn that stream into the raw material for the programme — which is why a canister costs what’s inside it and nothing more.
It also gives a club an easy, visible way to take part: put a bin by the courts and the members do the rest.
Take part
Four ways in.
Whether you have an afternoon, a community, a garage full of supplies, or a budget.
Assemble canisters
Join a packing session, or run one with your class, team or office. Two to three hours, and you leave with a countable pile of finished canisters.
Write kindness notes
From anywhere, with a pen. Notes go inside canisters exactly as you wrote them.
Host a drive
Collect empty tubes at a club, or hygiene supplies anywhere else. We'll send the list and the signage.
Fund a run
The tubes are free. The contents aren't. A gift designated to Care Canisters buys exactly what's on the list above.
Care Canister
Fill a tube. Hand it to somebody.
Packing sessions run regularly around Los Angeles and the Bay Area, and notes can be written from anywhere in the world.