The Full Story
Our Timeline
Here's the full journey of Clothing The Need!
December 2021
​For our CAS project, we were brainstorming ideas. We wanted to make a project that directly benefited minorities. After considering a number of pressing challenges in New York City, we decided to focus on assisting the homeless.
January 2022
It was tough to identify how we might assist the homeless. However, Arin and Anika remembered seeing a location called Housing Works, a non-profit organization dedicated to fighting AIDS and homelessness in New York City. That's when the concept of a clothing drive was established and we wrote our initial proposal.
February 2022
Despite the fact that Housing Works was a fantastic choice, we were still undecided about partnering with them. We conducted extensive research on other non-profit organizations throughout several group meetings. MinKwon Center for Community Action was another viable alternative; however, MinKwon concentrated mostly on other socio-economic challenges, such as assisting low-income Asian immigrant populations. We eventually collaborated with Housing Works since MinKwon took us away from our desire to aid the homeless.
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Mid-February​
We reached out to Housing Works via email to see if we might collaborate on clothing donations. We included a proposal in the email, stating our project goals and why we wanted to collaborate with them.​
March 2022:
March 5: Anika, Arin, and Sahana went to SOHO Housing Works and asked Kim, the manager, to be our supervisor. We questioned about delivery and whether they could accept huge quantities of clothing. If the clothing load was excessive, she advised us to go to the Chelsea location.
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March 11: Sahana and Anika went to Dollar Tree and obtained eight boxes. Created flyers to place around BSGE hallways and for Anika and Arin’s lobby.
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March 14: Launched clothing drive in BSGE and placed two bins in the lobby, two in the cafeteria, one in front of Margaret’s room, and one in Peter’s office.
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March 12: Launched clothing drive in apartment buildings and placed flyers in the lobby of each apartment building.
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March 27-29: Nyasa and Anika painted boxes because group members all felt that making the boxes look a little more jazzed up would encourage students to donate. Placed more flyers around BSGE. Additionally, we asked Margaret to send out an email to all students and parents about the intention of our clothing drive and how donations can be made during the IB Art show. Also, Anika and Arin weekly checked on the donations in the apartment buildings
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March 31: Day of the art show where parents brought tons of clothes. Boxes were all filled; therefore, we used some bins from the BSGE building.
April 2022
April 1: To remind the BSGE community about the clothing drive, Nyasa sent an email out to the school about our goals, cause, and locations of the bins around the school.
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April 9: First drop off of clothes to Housing Works.
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For the rest of April, students continued to bring in clothing as another email was sent out to students about an estimated time of when the clothing drive would end. Anika and Arin continued to weekly check on the clothing donations in each of their own apartment buildings.
May 2022
May 12: Ended clothing drive in apartment buildings.
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May 16: Ended clothing drive in BSGE
