We hear about donating all the time; whether it’s clothing, shoes, food, household items or feminine hygiene products, there is always an underprivileged community in need.

The local Clemson community does a great job of assuaging these communities’ needs through various donation drives and service events. Specifically, Clemson University partnered with The Dream Center six years ago to begin receiving donations during students’ move-out weekends.

The Dream Center is a faith-based, non-profit resale store that was established in 2012 in the Upstate with the intention of encouraging, educating and empowering those in need “with a hand up instead of a hand out,” according to its website.

Clemson and The Dream Center took the partnership one step further the following year by implementing donation bins scattered throughout different locations on campus. This allowed people to donate clothing and household items to the resale store throughout the school year.

The donation bin items are picked up every other week during the summer, and every week during the school year, according to Chris Wilson, executive director and founder of The Dream Center.

“The donations help us tremendously as the resale store provides 83% of our financial sustainability,” Wilson continued, adding that The Dream Center has never applied for or received government funding.

What many people fail to realize is that although the donation items are benefiting the underprivileged communities of Upstate South Carolina, The Dream Center itself is in need of volunteers to help sort the hordes of items that are constantly flooding in.

Last semester, I had the opportunity to volunteer at The Dream Center’s location in Pickens. While the group I was with worked hard to help out as much as possible in the short, two-hour volunteer time slot, it seemed like we barely made a dent in sorting through the clothing donations and bringing them out on the floor at the store.

The back room in which we were helping out was piled high with everything from clothing tops and bottoms, to shoes, toys, hangers, shopping carts, fur coats and more.

“We have hundreds of Clemson students volunteer with us throughout the year,” Wilson said in an interview. “Not really sorting donations but doing many other things that are needed at the Dream Center.”

Wilson said that in 2025, the center picked up 115,982 lbs of donations from Clemson’s campus, which consisted of clothing and household dorm items. The center was then able to sell the items at its resale stores.

This is an incredible number of donations, and truly speaks to the generous, kind nature of the people who make up the Clemson community — both on and off campus.

However, I encourage you to keep in mind that the paid resale store staff have to go through each of those pounds of donations, among other tasks necessary for keeping The Dream Center running, which is an incredible amount of work. So the next time you drop off an old pair of jeans in one of the on-campus donation bins, consider donating an afternoon of your time to volunteer.

Kat Pugh is a junior English major from Clayton, California. Kat can be reached at [email protected].