Café Hope - Scrubbing up for sobriety
Download Scrubbing up for sobriety
Recorded at the Hay Festival, Chris Sylvester, founder of Getting Clean, tells Rachel Burden how his recovery from heroin addiction made him want to help other addicts. Starting with litter picking and helping in the community, Chris then moved on to making soap. Recovering addicts now make and sell the soap, with half the profits going to addiction charities.
Café Hope is our virtual Radio 4 coffee shop, where guests pop in for a brew and a chat to tell us what they're doing to make things better in big and small ways. Think of us as sitting in your local café, cooking up plans, hearing the gossip, and celebrating the people making the world a better place.
We're all about trying to make change. It might be a transformational project that helps an entire community, or it might be about trying to make one life a little bit easier. And the key here is in the trying. This is real life. Not everything works, and there are struggles along the way. But it's always worth a go.
You can contact us on cafehope@bbc.co.uk
Presenter: Rachel Burden
Series Producer: Uma Doraiswamy
Sound Design: Cameron Ward
Editor: Tom Bigwood
Published on Monday, 14th September 2026.
Available Podcasts from Café Hope
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