Psy­chol­ogy Club Cloth­ing Drive Flour­ish­ing

MISHAWAKA—Every spring, the Bethel Psy­chol­ogy Club or­ga­nizes a cloth­ing drive on cam­pus to give back to our com­mu­nity. The cloth­ing drive is open for the en­tire month of April; clothes, back­packs, school sup­plies and un­opened hy­giene prod­ucts are all ac­cepted. This year, the drive is do­ing ex­cep­tion­ally well; as of April 17, the do­na­tions were al­ready about triple the to­tal do­na­tions last year. Stu­dents can par­tic­i­pate by leav­ing items in one of the do­na­tion bins lo­cated in each dorm. If they have any ques­tions, stu­dents can con­tact Dr. Spivey or Claire Piper.

Piper, a se­nior psy­chol­ogy ma­jor and Pres­i­dent of the Psy­chol­ogy Club, is play­ing a large part in or­ga­niz­ing and main­tain­ing the cloth­ing drive.

“My role is over­see­ing it, mak­ing sure peo­ple are get­ting the clothes out of bins when they start to over­flow,” said Piper. “It’s been re­ally chal­leng­ing to do that be­cause we’ve had so many do­na­tions.”

Piper said that they try to choose a sep­a­rate or­ga­ni­za­tion each year to give the do­na­tions to.

“Every year, we have do­nated the clothes some­where dif­fer­ent,” said Piper. “That way we can kind of spread the love, be­cause there’s so many or­ga­ni­za­tions who would be grate­ful for that.”

This year, the Psy­chol­ogy Club chose to do­nate the items to the Youth Ser­vice Bu­reau of St. Joseph County, an or­ga­ni­za­tion that Piper first got in­volved with last year.

“I was talk­ing to them about some of their needs, and they were just say­ing that they had a sig­nif­i­cant lack of cloth­ing for in­di­vid­u­als, back­packs, just ba­sic sup­plies,” said Piper. “They were ec­sta­tic about all the do­na­tions.”

Piper said that the or­ga­ni­za­tion fo­cuses on help­ing at-risk youth.

“Youth who are on the street, or maybe are home­less, or are bounc­ing in be­tween homes or liv­ing sit­u­a­tions, it’s a place where they can go and take a shower, get a change of clothes, get some hy­giene sup­plies,” said Piper.

Piper said that these do­na­tions can help change lives.

“These do­na­tions help them build their con­fi­dence and be able to build bet­ter re­la­tion­ships,” said Piper. “A lot of times these kids that we’re see­ing, they’re wrapped up in gangs, they’re wrapped up in some re­ally neg­a­tive be­hav­iors... we want peo­ple to be whole and healthy.”

Piper said that sim­ply know­ing some­one cares is of­ten enough to make a dif­fer­ence.

“It makes them feel wor­thy and ap­pre­ci­ated, which is what we want,” said Piper.

If you have any ques­tions about the cloth­ing drive, you can con­tact Piper via email at: claire.piper@bethel­col­lege.edu.