What is Happy Handbag? 

Happy Handbag is a private, not for profit scheme set up in August 2016 by Jeanne Long.  Happy Handbag is not a registered charity but it does have the highest credentials – please check out our Testimonial page.  The Happy Handbag aim is to provide a handbag containing ladies personal/hygiene items to women in time of great hardship and/or homelessness.  Handbags, with toiletries donated, are given directly to a lady in a crisis situation, through a local service provider or charity.  Some high end handbags are sold in order to produce funds to fill the other handbags with the hygiene items.

The Happy Handbag scheme started in Bristol with a view to expanding our area as more donations of handbags are received. 
Through Service Providers people in the Bristol, Bridgewater, Cirencester, Gloucester, Newport, South Glos. and Swindon areas can benefit with a Happy Handbag,  Happy Handbag also supplies handbags to a brilliant initiative run by Avon & Somerset Police through Bluestone Project. (Plus a new collaboration starting soon – watch this space!)

In addition to this Happy Handbag accepts donations of clothing etc.  Again these are given to the Service Providers listed here.  We refer to these as Happys – a Happy could be a bag/sack of clothing etc.  Items that we  often don’t think about is underwear! 
In view of Health & Safety please ensure the donations are not heavy – small carrier for toiletries, carrier bag or 1/3 sack for items of clothing!

A record is kept of all deliveries to Service Providers.  Please click here to see a breakdown of the donations made.
Remember a Happy could represent 1 large item or a sack full of clothing so is only to be used as a guide as to the amount of donations given.

As you can imagine the Covid period was very difficult but Happy Handbag did manage to provide a reduced service through the help and support of Big Yellow Storage in Gloucester who gave a storage facility (and still do) for the hundreds of donated bags waiting to be filled. 
Thank you Big Yellow.  THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT

Also before Covid there were a number of drop off points where donations could be left – mainly a couple of big Tesco stores.  Unfortunately these stopped due to Covid and Happy Handbag is slowly trying to rebuild a collection point network.

Please Get in touch if you have donations to make or would like to offer a collection/drop of facility for your area.