By: Ellen Laws
“Every 18 seconds a child becomes an orphan,” according to The Red Bus Project’s website. “There are currently more than 140 million orphans in the world.” In light of these statistics, a traveling thrift store (The Red Bus Project) came into existence to care for orphans while educating college students about the global orphan crisis.
The bus will make an appearance at Gardner-Webb in Stewart Hall of Tucker on Tuesday, April 12 at 9:30 a.m. until 4 p.m.
Gardner-Webb students can donate their clothes or buy clothes from the double decker bus. Junior Olivia Bouknight said, “I think it will give students an outlet to pay it forward and make a difference.”
Sprouting from Emily Chapman’s dream to give college students a way to help orphans, Caleb Chapman and Chris Wheeler came up with the idea of a thrift store where the money would go toward orphans. The Red Bus Project is a subgroup of orphan care non-profit, Show Hope.
As said on their website, “[The Red Bus Project] was created out of Show Hope’s desire to see students engaged with the global orphan crisis and give them a tangible way to help meet the needs of orphans outside of a simple donation.”
Some Gardner-Webb students, such as Bouknight, feel as though helping with the orphan crisis is like giving a voice to the voiceless. Bouknight said, “I also think it is important, because orphans cannot speak for themselves.”
Donating and purchasing from this mobile thrift store is one way out of many that college students can help this cause. On their website, The Red Bus Project said they “seriously believe college students have the ability to change the world and influence their peers to do the same.”
For more information, go to http://redbusproject.org, or contact Tracy Jessup at [email protected].
