Gators Give Back Eighth Annual Rummage Sale

Gators Give Back Eighth Annual Rummage Sale
Main event: Thursday, May 7, 2015
7:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.

$2 bag day: Friday, May 8, 2015
7:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.

Stone United Methodist Church, Meadville Pa.

April 30, 2015 – Gators Give Back, an Allegheny College student initiative, will hold its annual rummage sale for the community on May 7 and 8 at Stone United Methodist Church, Meadville, Pa.

According to Kirsten Peterson, Allegheny adviser of health professions, students have begun collecting items on campus from students, faculty and staff. Items include appliances, clothes, shoes, furniture, linens, housewares, toys/games and more.

Proceeds from the sale benefit Project Chacocente, a grassroots effort outside Managua, Nicaragua, that helps families previously residing in the city’s municipal dump relocate to a healthier, sustainable life within a rural farming community. Previously, these individuals lived completely from the resources they found in the dump – lending new significance to the term “rummage.”

Proceeds also benefit Stone United Methodist Church and the Meadville Soup Kitchen. In the past seven years, sales have totaled more than $12,000.

“Gators Give Back accomplishes three main goals. First, it substantially reduces end-of-the-year college waste. Second, it offers lost-cost food, clothing and other items to the greater Meadville community. Finally, it supports worthy community projects both at home and afar,” Peterson says. “I am so proud of Allegheny students for starting and sustaining this project.”

“Gators Give Back is a way of engaging with the communities that surround me in order to make a huge impact and assist so many well-deserving people,” adds Allegheny junior Clara Möller. “With all of the donations and volunteers we have for this project, we are able to save a huge amount of perfectly good items from going to the landfill and instead give them to people who could use them.

“In my opinion, it’s a way to bring Allegheny College, Meadville residents and Project Chacocente together as a community. We as Allegheny students have so much power to create change and to connect and give back to our community,” she says.

The idea for the sale originates from an experiential learning trip Allegheny students first took to Nicaragua in 2007. Students have since returned to the area in 2010, 2012 and 2014.

During the trips, students worked alongside residents to clear and plant community-cultivated fruit and vegetable fields, build and improve classroom buildings and other facilities (including the community’s first flush toilets) and play with the children at the on-site school.

Möller was one of the students who went on the 2014 trip.

“My experience working with the members of Project Chacocente in Nicaragua was life changing, and my heart connected with their beautiful, resilient spirits,” she says. “The people there taught us useful construction skills, as well as the meaning of community, and opened my eyes to how much can be accomplished if everyone does their part. I participate in the Gators Give Back Rummage Sale for all of them.”

For more information, contact Kirsten Peterson at kpeterso@allegheny.edu.