Pen Huston works for a homeless charity and she was quite upset after knowing the charity Surviving the Streets UK did not have enough sleeping bags for those who need one.
The 45-year-old lady came up with an idea to create sleeping bags for homeless people. The arts and crafts business owner from Hastings, East Sussex creates sleeping bags by ironing together 150 empty bags.
Pen said: ‘We help hundreds of people daily but we don’t get any funding, so we were running out of sleeping bags to give out. I wanted to make something which could keep people living on the streets dry for longer.’’
‘‘I was lying awake one night and I thought it would be nice to get in a giant crisp packet to protect yourself from the wet and keep the warm in.’’
Pen requested from people to send crisp packets from across the UK to her and she received thousands in quantity. She fuses them to a sheet of plastic as the foil packets work like insulation and makes 150 at a time.
She added: ‘’All these sleeping bags will save lives. ‘This was about making something out of nothing. ‘We live in such a throwaway society, but not everything has to cost money.’’
‘‘All the homeless people we work with are really happy with them, they’re so grateful. ‘They’ve been using them in different ways, sleeping in them at night and using them for storage in the day.’’
‘’One man who’d been living in his car for four years told me it was going to be fantastic for sleeping in his car, and another man used to have to sleep with two sleeping bags but only needed this one.’’
‘‘But really it’s horrific, really shocking that I’m having to do this – we live in one of the richest countries in the world and I’m sat making sleeping bags out of crisp packets.’’
A team of eight volunteers have given more than 10 sleeping bags to ten homeless people in Hastings and the team has a plan to move onto nearby Eastbourne next.
Pen’s next mission is to create tents and ponchos and she is encouraging others to make their own sleeping bags.
She added: ‘It’s not feasible to stay in one long term but for a short period of time they could save your life, especially at this time of year. You need 150 crisp packets per bag and just fuse the feet together, like an envelope. Then I put air holes in them so condensation doesn’t build up and they don’t get damp.’’
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