The Clothing the Need project has been a great way for me to maximize my usage of several skills: communication, leadership, problem-solving, and more. Along the way, my fellow peers and I faced numerous challenges; however, together we thought outside the box and our project was heavily successful.
At the beginning of the project, we had a general sense of what we wanted to accomplish: a clothing drive. However, this general vision blinded us from seeing the complications that follow behind a successful drive. Therefore, we identified what each of our strengths was. Arin and I with our well-built management and communication skills and Nyasa and Sahana with their connections and excellent outreach skills. From there, we divided our roles by ensuring that I would focus on facilitating that everyone fulfilled their roles in the project along with the constant communication with Housing Works.
Using Arin’s and my management skills, midway throughout the project, we had an idea of taking advantage of the IB Art show by using that event to bring large amounts of donations. Therefore, Nyasa and Sahana engaged in outreach using flyers and sending emails to the students of BSGE. Luckily, we were triumphant as parents and students had brought twice as much clothing as we had before.
Aside from the clothing drive within our school, Arin and I managed the clothing drive within each of our individual apartment buildings. The purpose of having the clothing drive in another location besides BSGE was to guarantee that if the clothing drive within our school was unsuccessful, we still had backup clothes to provide to Housing Works. I set up the clothing drive within my building on March 12th where I placed two bins and flyers around the lobby to start off. The following week, I went to check on the bins, and it was completely full! From then, I continued to do weekly checkups of the bins and bring the clothes home temporarily. For my apartment building, the clothing drive flourished the most around March-April, but gradually decreased in the donation load by May. Therefore, by May 12th, I discontinued the donation drive.
Ultimately, my experience with Clothing the Need has been amazing as I learned so much from my peers and from myself as I tried navigating the way so that my friends and I were up to date with our objectives for this project. Who would’ve known that we all make a great team such that we were victorious!
During my experience with Housing Works, I have been able to advance my skills as a team member, along with both my peers and with the coordinators in the Housing Works shop. I was able to work with new people and collaborate as a team in order to get work done efficiently for my CAS project.
During the beginning of the project, I was able to collaborate with other people in order to get certain tasks done. Not only did I reach out to the coordinators of the shop, but I had the opportunity to reach out to a different school due to a potential collaboration for donations. This chance helped me learn how a collaborative project is supposed to work and what elements are entailed in the whole process.
As my group and I collected donations around the school for numerous weeks, I was able to get a hands on experience for what it’s like working with others. I had talked to countless people about donating and felt as though online promotions also helped in obtaining more clothes and getting closer to the goal. When collecting and transferring clothes to the donation facility, the teamwork needed taught me how to work with other people and separate roles in order to get a big job done. While accepting these donations, my group was able to gather a lot for the people in need, which was a great ending to the job.
In general, my experience with my teammates and with Housing Works has been an educational, eventful, and joyous one and I’m quite grateful that I was able to get the opportunity to help people in such a way.
My journey on our project of Clothing The Need has been one I have been incredibly proud of. I was able to combine my passions of fashion, thrifting, and serving my local community to create an effort to help the dual crises of homelessness and AIDS in New York City. My motivation for this project was my love for our home city of New York coupled with my mission to better the community.
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We came up with the idea for Clothing The Need to provide an opportunity for our local communities to come together for a common cause. The clothing drive we started in our high school and in the buildings that a couple of our team members live in. We were overwhelmed with the outcome of the amount of clothes donated. It was really striking to see the amount of people who were willing to contribute clothes to improve issues directly impacting minority groups.
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Throughout the course of this project, I have learned how to be a good leader in terms of coordinating with authority figures within my school and at Housing Works. I was able to conduct my endeavors with organizational skills that allowed me to schedule pickup and drop offs of the clothes as well as preparing and setting out the boxes to collect clothes for the drive. ​
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Overall, my involvement and contribution to Clothing The Need allowed me to better understand the weight of what seems like a small contribution to a larger issue.
My participation in Clothing the Need has allowed me to explore my potential in giving back to the community in a multitude of ways. From being able to brainstorm what the basis of this project to being able to physically interact with out ideas coming to life, there was a lot that I have learned. Being able to work with a trusted and sturdy group was a aspect that aided this CAS project to become what it is today.
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Beginning this CAS project, my friend I went to this thrift store that captured our attention. At the top of the Housing Work’s ceiling (the organization we are collaborating with) they had mentioned how all their money goes to aid homelessness and aids. A few weeks later when brainstorming out project, Housing Works and their mission came into mind. From there we have been handing all our donations to this organization. From the experience of interacting with the manager to the store and group members and participating in events that got our mission out there, strong foundations were built.
Going on to spreading our group’s mission to our own neighborhoods, out of the four members in our group, Anika and I resides in an apartment building which allows us to expand the income of clothes we can donate to the thrift chain. Setting up a box in my lobby, with the collaborated posters that we created. A successful amount of clothes was brought in by my fellow neighbors which impacted our clothing drive a great amount.
Overall, my involvement with Clothing the Need had allowed me to experience of a rollercoaster of ups and down with my group members. With being able to reach out to our community to aid human struggles, our mission was able to help a few more lives.