Even if you don’t have a long list of jilted lovers like fallen leaves trailing in your wake, showering you with gifts to try to win you back, there’s a high likelihood that at some point along your journey you’ve received a gift for Valentine’s Day that for whatever reason you just no longer want to hold onto. Maybe it came from some swaggering lothario that you’d rather not be reminded of every time it catches your eye, or maybe it’s just not really your style. Maybe, like many of us, you just need to clean out your closet.
It was with this in mind that Camosun College Student Society (CCSS) women’s director Madison Huynh came up with their recent donation-collecting event, Thanks but No Thanks, which took place on Tuesday, February 10 at Interurban and Thursday, February 12 at Lansdowne.
“It started as a joke, actually. We were like, ‘Oh, wouldn’t it be funny, just a bunch of people bring stuff and we actually burn it all?” Huynh says with a laugh. “But, of course, we can’t set fire to things on campus.”
But now the wheels had begun to turn, and an idea was beginning to take shape.
“So, we were like, ‘What else can we do?’” says Huynh. “And then it’s just like, ‘We can give back to the community and turn something that’s bad into something good.’”
With a two-part plan now well underway, it was time to jump the first hurdle: getting donations for the Camosun Child Care Centres and Women in Need (WIN) lined up.
“So the event entails donating your existing thing, or, you know, unwanted gift and then we get all together, make sure it’s in good condition, and then we’re giving it, some to WIN, and some to the daycare centre on campus,” says Huynh.
Huynh says that among the usual suspects of plush stuffed animals and small trinkets, there were a few surprises to be ferreted out among the crops of donations.
“We had one teacher bring in so much needed supplies, like shampoo, conditioner, toothbrushes, everything. They were like, ‘Please give this to the people that need it.’ I think the craziest thing we got was a handful of jewelry. They just wanted to get rid of it.”
Huynh says that WIN is a good example of an organization that takes donations and the money raised from them goes to a good cause.
“WIN are a place where you can donate houseware things and a number of other things, and it’s kind of like Value Village, but way, way better in that items that get donated to them, once sold, raise profits to help women in need in the community,” says Huynh.
Huynh doesn’t know yet if Thanks but No Thanks will take place annually, but for now, she says it was an uplifting event during a tough time.
“There’s tons of horrible things going on in the world, and that and all the stress of school compounds together,” says Huynh, “and it just feels like they need all the support they can get, they need any little bit of laughter.”