Donations will be sent to the organization to clothe homeless youth
CHRISTINE BEYLEVELDT // NEWS EDITOR
The Capilano University Marketing Association (CAPUMA) hosted their annual clothing drive last week, an initiative spearheaded four years ago to collect clothing for a Vancouver charity. This year, Director of Events Sarah Friesen chose the local charity. “I chose Covenant House because I partnered with them when I was in high school actually, we did a sleep-out for my social justice class,” said Friesen. The experience, she added, showed her what sort of chalengeses homeless youth faced every day.
Covenant House is an agency that provides food, shelter and services for homeless and runaway youth. By partnering with them, Friesen hopes it will show the CAPUMA as an organization that cares about community.
For the last two years, the CAPUMA has collected donations for the Dress for Success Vancouver Society, which provides support and business attire to women who can’t afford it. “I do know that they [CAPUMA] did have a struggle finding – because it was just business clothes that they were looking for, and a lot of students here, they’re just getting started in the business industry so they maybe don’t have a lot of extra business clothes lying around,” said Friesen. “But Covenant House, they kind of collect everything which is why it was kind of perfect for us.”
She remarked midway through the week that she would’ve liked to see more men on campus bringing clothing donations. Men make up 70 per cent of Vancouver’s homeless population, but at that point the vast majority of donations the CAPUMA had received were women’s clothing and shoes. “I’d like to make a difference somehow in some of these people’s lives,” Friesen said.