It’s not a secret that college is expensive. From tuition costs to furnishing rooms and feeding yourself, money is not something to be thrown around during your college years. Clothing is just another thing to add to that expense list. Thankfully, Ohio University's Voinovich School of Leadership and Public Affairs is helping students access cheap and lightly worn clothing, right here on campus.
The Voinovich School has taken it upon itself to bring the thrift stores to students, funded by the Sugar Bush Foundation. With help from its collaborators, Habitat for Humanity, Rural Action and Goodwill, Voinovich can provide students with affordable clothing and tackle the sustainability issues of fast fashion.
This is Voinovich’s second thrift event, with the first one taking place last April over Mom's Weekend. With how successful the first event was, Voinovich is planning on hosting more thrift events in addition to the ones that occurred this previous Thursday and Friday. It plans on coming back with more thrift events around Halloween, coming back from winter break and one more on Mom's Weekend.
Nicole Kirchner, a staff member on the energy and environment team at the Voinovich School, is one of the people helping out with the thrift stand. She expressed how important sustainability is to Voinovich, mentioning several other projects that it is a part of. These include the Appalachian Ohio Zero Waste Initiative and providing educational outreach materials to the OU community.
“It's one of those first efforts or activities when you want to become more sustainable, how do we reduce the amount of waste we produce that goes to the landfill?” she said. “[With the thrift events] we are trying to solve three issues: diverting things from the landfill, making sure students get what they need, and eliminating that transportation barrier for students to be able to get to the thrift stores.”
When you’re buying clothes at an ordinary thrift store, your money goes directly to those companies and corporations. All profit made from these pop-ups hosted by the Voinovich School goes right back into the community. The collaborators who provided the clothing will be receiving the funds, which will help support their respective missions and initiatives.
The market was stocked with clothing, jewelry, shoes, appliances, books, etc. There were several student volunteers helping check people out, and there were tents to help with the heat of the day.
Ally Mayberry, a freshman studying interior architecture, stopped to buy a cute orange sweatshirt and purple necklace on Friday. She mentioned that the thrift event was right outside the building she had just been in, making it a convenient stop.
“It’s fun because I can find pieces that aren’t at malls that everyone else is wearing,” she said.
Aaron Kirby, a part of the impact enterprise team at the Voinovich School and another person helping organize the thrift stand, explained a little more about what they aim to do with these thrift pop-ups.
“It supports the makerspace, amongst other things,” he said. “So the profits are going back to the thrift stores, but they're using those profits to support everything that they do. On Voinovich’s side, we're not making any money on this. We are supporting it through our state-funded line items. So you know, we're kind of the university lead to make sure that we can access university resources to get the nonprofits on the campus.”
If you need new clothing, visit one of the upcoming pop-ups hosted by Voinovich. Events will be posted to their Instagram and website.
