On the 26th of January, we went to the Housing Works thrift shop to volunteer and learn more about what they do. Housing works is an organizations that raises money through bookstores and thrift shops for HIV prevention. They also give free medical attention, a place to stay for LGBTQ people and more. We volunteered at one of their thrift stores because that’s where they needed the most help. When we got there we got our aprons on, and John the supervisor for us told us what we needed to do, and why. Mika started out with greeting people at the door, and saying goodbye to people as they leave. Gwen went to organize the dresses, Isabella went to organize the men’s department, Juliet organized blouses, and I organized shoes and skirts. All the clothes were specifically organized by color order, we were given color cards to help indicate how we should organize the clothing. After each hour we switched around our jobs to continue on what someone else previously was working on. We also started cleaning the store, and working on inventory. I organized a filthy room into a beautiful organized clean room, it took a long time but the room looked great in the end. If we were asked a question by a customer that we didn’t know the answer to, we would just direct them to John. He was really nice and he told us a little more about the store and what it stands for. Overall we ended up working really hard for four hours in the store. It was a lot of work but I really liked it because I really like to organize things and we got to learn a lot about working to help the LGBTQ community.

Sorting dresses

Sorting shoes and skirts

Mika saying hello

Isabella sorting suit jackets

The dresses color coded.