Move Out program expands its reach

Greencastle High School students and chaperones help load up a U-Haul truck filled with items collected from the Move Out program to deliver to the former Brackney's site for storage and eventually, for donation.

DePauw University's Move Out program is in its third year, but in that third year it was able to reach a number of families it never had access to before.

The Move Out program is a philanthropic project that collects various items from students as they move out of their homes and dormitories at DePauw and donates them to families in need. The program is a result of the hard work of the Putnam County Family Support Services and Missy Orr, assistant director for sustainability at DePauw.

"Each year has become progressively better in the amount of donations," Orr said.

The program collects the donations through boxes in the dormitory hallways and other collection areas. The group rents U-Haul trucks to pack up their donations and bring them to Brackney's to store them until the items are given to families.

And the group is happy to take anything and everything. Orr said they receive appliances, food, clothing, furniture, utensils, accessories, light fixtures toys, jackets and much more.

Last year the group donated their items to 11 families in the county, but this year, thanks largely to the efforts of the PCFSS, the Move Out program gave their eclectic collection of odds and ends to more than 50 families.

Orr said that by working with the different groups in the county, including the Greencastle Rotary Club, Civic League and Greencastle Kiwanis Club, as well as procuring many volunteers, the program has been able to expand its scope in many ways.

It also works with other programs to give donated items to others. Matt Demmings is one of these recipients. An employee of DePauw Public Safety, Demmings also runs the Coats for Kids program, which helps give coats and jackets to children who need them for the winter. This year the group received 15 to 18 bags of coats, jackets, sweaters and sweatshirts to give to children in need.

"It has developed into a great informal partnership," Demmings said in an email. "The past two years the PCYDC has been providing boxes that we use for our Coats for Kids collection efforts to help collect some of the donated materials, and DePauw has donated a tremendous amount of winter/fall clothing wear to us for our Coats for Kids campaign."

Next year, Orr said she would love to see the program grow even further, tapping into the community and DePauw's Greek organizations to collect even more donations. She won't be able to do this herself however, as Orr will be joining the Peace Corps for two years starting in August, but Orr said she believes the PCFSS will continue the program and DePauw will hopefully do the same.

The benefits of the program are not just in the donations, as working with the many programs has been very beneficial to Orr.

"We work with a multitude of organizations. I love meeting the people that volunteer because they're part of organizations that I didn't know much about," Orr said.