Anna Banana’s and Students Helping Honduras teamed up to give back to the Boone and Honduras communities in the form of a thrift shop on Sanford Mall on Wednesday.
The pop-up shop sold secondhand clothing from Anna Banana’s and succulents planted in empty beer and soda cans. The plants were left over from Students Helping Honduras’ recent succulent sale.
Junior sustainable development major and Students Helping Honduras president Allison Turner said in an email that all proceeds went toward the club’s winter Honduras trip to build a school.
The funds also contributed to helping Hondurans finish building the school during the spring, Turner said in an email.
The organization’s goal is to build 1,000 schools in Honduras to help mitigate extreme poverty and violence, according to the Students Helping Honduras website.
Senior marketing major Ary Bautista, Anna Banana’s marketing intern, was a liaison between the thrift store and Students Helping Honduras.
Bautista said he was enrolled in an online marketing class and was assigned to head a marketing campaign for honors credit.
“I’ve been interested in sustainability and fashion, and one of my ideas was having a pop-up shop,” Bautista said.
Bautista said his idea was originally a for-profit campus shop for Anna Banana’s, until he learned about Students Helping Honduras’ past on-campus thrift shops.
Customers can consign clothing to the store every Monday, according to Anna Banana’s website. Clothing that is not bought is either donated to charity or returned to its owner.
“The donated items are what we were using for the thrift shop,” Bautista said. “It’s a win-win everywhere, because (Students Helping Honduras) is using the money to help people, but clothing is also going back into the community.”
Senior social work major Sophie Bird is the vice president of Students Helping Honduras and said the club’s thrift shop is a consistently successful fundraiser.
“We didn’t have to spend money doing it and the clothes were donated, so everything we made went straight to us,” Bird said. “Every year, (our profit) has gotten better.”
Students Helping Honduras is hosting a Halloween bake sale in the Plemmons Student Union on Oct. 31 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Story by Christina Beals
Photo by Christina Beals
Featured photo caption: Students Helping Honduras, an App State organization, raised money for their upcoming Honduras trip by having a pop-up thrift shop on Sanford mall on Wednesday, Oct. 24.