New and slightly-used school supplies (and clothes) are collected from area schools during their year-end locker clean-out days. Through the distribution of these supplies, greenLockers not only facilitates education, but also enables students to build community, gain courage and break out of cycles of poverty that they may have been stuck in for generations.
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I just wanted to share with everyone that we recieved news a few nights ago that greenLockers materials have made it down to a village just south of Bogota, Columbia. I am posting the email:
“I [the author of the email] went down with one other person and we lived in Los Altos de la Florida, Colombia (just [...]
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When students clean out their lockers (or even dorm rooms) at the end of the school year, we provide alternative containers for them to discard their new and slightly-used school supplies (and clothes). We then collect all of the materials, sort them, and distribute them locally, nationally, and internationally – to children/students in need.
The vision:
Short-term: Run a successful campaign in 5-star schools and other area schools (i.e., Northern Indiana) – solidifying the role of student organizations, establishing a reasonable and replicable drop-off/pick-up/storage system from a logistics perspective, and creating new avenues for distributing materials.
Long-term: I would like to be able to move into schools outside of of the area with other eligible student groups (NHS, young-life, etc…), and also move into more high schools and colleges.
Dream-term: Not going to shy away from this. . . I don’t see any reason why this can’t someday be in every school in the country . . . . there is a great need nationally and internationally, and it costs very little money. . . seriously. . . I dream of this effort, literally changing the world!
Mission slogan:
Equipping students . . . moving the world forward
4 years ago I was working on my PhD at Notre Dame, I decided to go down to Back2Back in Mexico with Lifeline (now called Granger Student Ministries), Corey Mann mentioned to us that we needed to fill 40 suitcases full of school supplies to give away. I think that stressed us all out a little bit. . . that is a lot of pencils! However, I remember that night in my quiet time God telling me, with His great sense of humor. . . “40? . . . I am so much bigger than 40 suitcases”. In the coming days, I believe that God allowed me to remember back to my own school days, and specifically, the locker clean-out days at the end of every year. You know. . . . when there is a controlled dump of all of the contents of your locker into the nearest trashcan (which were located every 3 feet in the hallway). I simply thought. . . what if, . . . instead of throwing away everything, I provided different containers that the students could put new or slightly used school supplies and clothes into?? That was the beginning of greenLockers(it was called Trash to Treasure until this year).
Simple enough idea, I thought. It is a long story so let’s fast forward a bit. . . I was in two schools that first year (Clay High School first and then Discovery Middle School). Though I am forever grateful to Joy Laurent over at Clay . . . I learned that it can be very difficult at the high school level – on the first day, most of my boxes were destroyed with pop cans, and a few members of the custodial staff – were very upset with me (thinking that it was their job to clean it up), until they saw me cleaning all of the hallways myself . . . . (side note. . . . I was literally, so discouraged that first day that I nearly gave up. . . that is, until someone expressed (very passionately) about how stupid of an idea this was. . . . well. . . that’s all it took for my competitive juices to go into overdrive. . . . . I decided right then in there that I was all in!!! . . . no way was I going to back down now!! Now, all issues were resolved at Clay because there was a big misunderstanding. . . and by the end of the few days I was joking around with the staff very easily – good times! I will always be grateful for Clay High School giving me my first shot at this. I learned so much from that effort and overall, it was a positive experience. Discovery Middle School was a much smoother success, and I realized that materials from Middle schools were very diverse (i.e., could be used for a wide range of children). I received, with no advertising, and minimal effort, over 20 pillow boxes worth of materials (way more than 40 suitcases) that year.
During year two, I partnered with 5-star, Waste Management (who donated over 200 big trash totes for free), Feed The Children (used some of their warehouse space for free), and Granger Community Church (for sorting and distribution of collected materials – to The Crossing for example). In each 5-star school, I set up leadership teams of students that would be in charge of putting the totes in the hallways on the appropriate days as well as advertising by word of mouth. I focused on Middle schools due to the wide range of supplies (i.e., art supplies for little kids as well as notebooks and stuff for older kids), the respect of the students and teachers, and the already present influence of 5-star. I received over 6500 pounds of materials from those 5 schools – - an unbelievable success! Those supplies then went to a local alternative school, some ministries in Chicago, as well as Back2Back in Mexico.
Here is a picture of Corey and I unloading some more containers
good times - over 6500 pounds of supplies!
Last year (year 3), we were going to be in 9 schools (same as 5-star), but I had to leave to go out of town at the end of last May, and so the project did not go through. That is why this year. . . .it is not all on me. . . in fact I am raising up a team right now that is going to be able to take this project to the next level!
This last year (2009) was a great success overall for greenLockers! We were able to have a strong partnership with local Martin’s Super Markets in our bin collecting. We were able to collect over 1,500 old St. Joseph County recycling bins with the help of volunteers from Bethel College. Another strong partnership we had was with Better World Books and we are excited for the future with book drives during locker clean our days.
Next, we moved onto getting a new name for our non-profit organization which is greenLockers. As you can see we were able to put together a website designed to inform you about everything you need to know about our organization. It is getting always getting updated with some new type of blog, news, or just posting update video’s speaking more in-depth about greenLockers. Another huge success this year was the new designing of our logo which is place on EVERY SINGLE bin that was collected during the bin collecting days!
Our big success of 2009 was the one and only…collecting the assorted supplies. We moved into 17 schools this year with the partnership of 5-Star again! This was once again a great success with this amazing program of 5-Star kids. This program was active in 12 out of the 17 schools we partnered up with. We dealth with schools from South Bend, Mishawaka, Granger, Goshen, Elkhart, and Dowagiac (Michigan). About 13,000-14,000 potential donors who were students saw these bins in there hall ways during locker clean out days that they had. We also got an exciting package from a school in Long Island, New York!!!! This was our first out-of-state school that added to our supplies. Not only did we deal with primary, middle, and high schools we got the great pleasure in partnering up with 2 local colleges here. We were able to get a great amount of supplies from Bethel College and The University of Norte Dame. We are really looking forward to being able to partner up with more colleges in the future. With all these schools combined together we reached a great deal of 9,000lbs of assorted supplies!!!!
With all the supplies collected we were able to have 2 Distribution Days at our warehouse in Elkhart. We had over 30 local non-profit charities sign up on our new online Wish List Application Form. They all came to collect supplies for there organization to help the children they deal with that are in need for the upcoming school year! These 2 days we had were a great success =) Especially when the warehouse we FILLED into sections of supplies and by the end of day 2 it was almost empty! So many memories happened within the 2 days that we will NEVER forget! We had about 1,400lbs of recycling that we were able to save from landfills. During the Distribution Days we got the excitement of being interviewed with local T.V. stations and also had the newspaper press come out to speak with us and shoot pictures of the warehouse.
We are really excited to see whats in-store for greenLockers next year! Also, we are ready to build off of 2009 and make Year 2010 an even better history!
If you are interested in having greenLockers in your school (i.e., you are a teacher, adminstrator, a parent, or a student) then I would love to hear from you at ted@greenLockers.org if you meet the following criteria.
These are the 2 necessary criteria**:
1. A student organization (e.g., National Honor Society, Young Life, 5-Star, student government, etc…) willing to lead the charge in that school.
- the responsibilities of this organization would be the following:
a. Some internal advertising towards the end of school (i.e., following the standard protocal of video announcements, etc…)
b. Placement of the containers into the hallways on locker clean-out days – we will provide the containers for you.
c. Retrieval of the containers on those days into a central location (i.e., need to get school administration approval for a staging area)
d. An initial sort of the collected supplies (i.e., to separate out the trash from the usable supplies, weigh, and sort)
2. Be able to have some contact with a school administrator for approval of the above actions.
We are putting finishing touches on a DVD that will walk you through the process.
**for Elementary schools only, a teacher or PTO group would be sufficient
Do you have a straight truck or a box truck that you might be willing to donate some time to greenLockers?
Trucks are needed in two major ways:
**1. To transport containers to and from schools in May:
when: around the last 2 weeks of May, one trip to drop off the containers at the schools (around end of the school day) and then one trip to pick them up and take them to the warehouse.
number needed: most likely 3, but still a bit unknown at this point. I should be getting some estimates in early May
time required: ~ 1-2 hours on the drop-off portion, but 2-3 hours for the pick-up process. There should be some volunteers at each location to help you load up the truck – then all you have to do is take it to the warehouse, where some other volunteers will be there to help unload it.
** we may also be using just regular pick-up trucks and/or trailors for this –
I am looking for someone to partner with greenLockers in manufacturing special containers that can be shipped to places around the country interested in this project. The containers would be some sort of collapseable structure (so that it can be shipped in bulk) with heavy duty capability (i.e., canvas around a collapseable frame). There obviously would be huge upside to advertising on these containers, which would be seen by tens of thousands of students (and that is just next year!) – I am open to any and all ideas!
If you run a non-profit organization, a school, or community center that could benefit from receiving school supplies please feel free to fill out a WISH LIST APPLICATION FORM!. At this point, all distribution of greenLockers’ supplies are NOT FOR RESALE of any kind. It is strictly a donation distribution. In other words, materials received through greenLockers should not be resold.
greenLockers is an official 501 c3 non-profit organization, so any money and/or resources donated are tax deductible. We handle all of the documentation, and simply send you a report at the end of the year for your taxes – very simple and easy. We really are grateful for any and all donations – regardless of the size, so thank you !
If you would like to partner with us on specific projects, here are some of our greatest needs at the moment:
1. Professional banners that are being made for the collection sites
2. Rental trucks (i.e., for collection and/or distibution) if necessary
4. Transportation costs – our team travels a lot during the Spring and early Summer to cast vision for the project in the areas that we are collecting. That travel really starts to add up!!
5. Funds to help support each school’s student organization as they advertise and celebrate greenLockers in their school
6. Further advertising and marketing in the community (and beyond) during the end of the school year.
7. Communication and Tech costs – There is a lot of logistical coordination that occurs each year – in need of several cell phones (or willing to fund cell phone lines), as well as being able to pay for web-based support (i.e., website, social media updates, video and photo updates, etc…)
8. In need of a major financial partner to help manufacture and/or financially support our efforts to make very unique “greenLockers containers” that could be shipped all around the country for schools that are interested. HUGE upside advertising wise on these containers (more detail listed above) – literally hundreds of thousands of students would be seeing these – right before getting out for the summer. I am entertaining all ideas.
9. If you are really serious about backing greenLockers financially, from a business/commercial standpoint, please send me an email - so we can discuss the details of such a partnership. For example – one of the potential benefits of such a partnership is that close to 20,000 students will be able to hear and see your business fairly regularly over the course of a week or so (right before summer break). In addition, we have had several radio/TV/newspaper bits that come out throughout the Spring this year, and fully expect much more in the future.
