It’s that time of year again for Southeast students - the time to decide whether the stuff they’ve collected in their dorms over the semester goes home or goes into the garbage.
One local organization hopes to offer another solution.
The Community Partnership of Southeast Missouri is urging students to: “Donate, don’t dump.”
This effort by the Community Partnership, formerly known as the Community Caring Council, is aimed at helping to improve the lives of local families in need.
Health Coordinator Dotty Gholson says the donations students make to the bins, which will be set up at Southeast’s Towers complex, will go towards a garage sale hosted by their Family Transition Team.
“We, in the years past, have dug through dumpsters. And so it got to the point, we decided, to put boxes in the dorms and Towers,” she said.
The money made at the garage sale will be used throughout the Community Partnership’s fiscal year to provide clients with necessary items such as birth certificates, tennis shoes, and even gas cards.
The team meets monthly, and decides on which families will receive help.
“I don’t know that we’ve ever turned anyone down,” Gholson said.
Donations will be picked up from Towers and Southeast dorms on Friday, May 10. The Garage Sale will take place on May 17 from 7:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. at the Boy Scout Activity Center.
Gholson says the Partnership will also be holding “Brush Strokes for Hope” on June 1, a painting event to benefit “Bikers for Re-entry.”
“Both of these events will help our clients tremendously because they just want to be back in the workforce, whether it be from incarceration or just clients who are having a hard time,” she said.
In the near future, the Community Partnership will be moving into the old police station they purchased in early April.