Meet Aditya Jain

We recently connected with Aditya Jain and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Aditya, really happy you were able to join us today and we’re looking forward to sharing your story and insights with our readers. Let’s start with the heart of it all – purpose. How did you find your purpose?

As I stood before a mountain of endless towels, washcloths, and bedsheets, the sheer size of my task became clear. In the next hour, there were hundreds of towels to fold, quality check, and redistribute throughout the hotel rooms; a task I had become accustomed to during my time serving as an intern at Landmark Hotel Group. I began examining the pile of what appeared to be normal linens and towels that had been shoved into a corner and became confused as to why they had been removed from the main pile. I asked the head of housekeeping about why there were two piles, and she explained that all of the items in the corner pile would be thrown away or used as rags because they were not up to brand standards, meaning they showed minimal signs of imperfection through minor stains and tears. I found this wasteful as they were still usable to the average person. Why should two hundred perfectly usable linens and towels be thrown away? I began to ponder other ways that these towels could be reused to not only improve hotel sustainability, but also give back to the local community.

Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?

Hotels for Humanity collects discarded linens, towels, and toiletries from hotel partners and redistributes them to local nonprofits serving people experiencing homelessness. We sort and assess item quality, organize by category, and deliver supplies to local organizations like ForKids, the Urban Renewal Center, and the Hampton Newport News Community Services Board. Items unsuitable for human use are donated to animal shelters. In the future, we are excited to expand our reach and expand within the United States. This project has expanded our understanding that hotel sustainability is a global problem that requires solving. We hope to not only expand our reach, but encourage hotels to participate in sustainable initiatives and partner with local communities to create positive change. We are currently working on expanding our partners to support as many people as possible, and we are always looking for new organizations to provide linens to.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

The qualities that truly guided our project were entrepreneurship, resilience, and collaboration. This project was created by firstly identifying a problem, the waste of usable hotel linens, and then creating a solution that supports the community. Through entrepreneurship, we were able to begin solving a problem in the hotel industry. Our vision of Hotels for Humanity involves improving sustainability through innovative solutions and partnerships with hotels. The hardest part of this project was truly taking the risks involved with creating a project and interacting with local community. With all projects, when you are first starting out, you will inevitably face obstacles and find yourself having to reroute your plans. Part of building a successful project is understanding that these obstacles are always part of the journey and that success is not found easily. As high school students, managing school and Hotels For Humanity has been challenging. We have had to plan around busy schedules, while also understanding the time constraints of non-profits. We have learned the value of scheduling in advance and planning. This project has taught us the value in flexibility and allowing ourselves to redirect our initiatives, especially when it benefits the communities we are serving. Collaborating with our community, whether it be the non-profits we provide linens to or our supporters has been an invaluable resource to us. We have found several amazing partnerships within our school, and we are very grateful for the teachers and administrators who have been willing to provide us time and resources to execute our ideas. If we were to advise others early in their journey, we would suggest firstly to reach out to friends, teachers, co-workers, and family who are passionate about the work you are doing and truly lean on them for support. The support of many amazing mentors allowed us to branch into new avenues and gain valuable experience and insight, and we would have never been able to reach this many communities without their advising.

Okay, so before we go, is there anyone you’d like to shoutout for the role they’ve played in helping you develop the essential skills or overcome challenges along the way?

Our mentors have provided us with endless support in overcoming the challenges associated with starting a project. Whether it be challenges with scheduling or finding partners, our mentors have always been a rock and have been willing to help us in anyway we need. When we had successes, such as expanding to a new hotel, they celebrated with us, and when we found obstacles they were the first ones to help us problem solve. In addition, with their years of professional experience, they never hesitated to interject their wisdom and provide us with ideas to better our initiative.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://hotels4humanity.org
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hotels4humanity/