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!

Year 2009 In History-

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!