By Madison Hiser
This semester, 12 University of Arkansas Greek chapters are participating in a local nonprofit effort to help women of the northwest Arkansas area in need. Beautiful Lives Thrift Boutique’s Shop Our Closet Sorority Thrift Challenge invites any of the UA sororities to participate in donating, volunteering, and shopping for the cause.
Beautiful Lives Thrift Boutique offers a unique approach to thrift shopping. This women-ran organization provides women of all backgrounds the opportunity to have an upscale shopping experience at a thrift store price. The mission of the organization is to help women navigate challenging circumstances, such as recovering from addiction, being in a season of grief or loss, recently being released from prison, pursuing fresh beginnings and more.
Beautiful Lives gives monetary support and gift certificates to their 10 ministry partnerships. In 2022 alone, more than 50,000 women were served, more than 6,000 hours were given by volunteers and more than $90,000 was donated to support the mission.
The Shop Our Closet Sorority Thrift Challenge allows student participants the chance to donate, volunteer at the store, and shop at the sale. Throughout the month of October, each of the sororities involved have encouraged their members to donate their gently used clothing, provided up to 20 volunteers to prepare clothes to be sold, and encouraged others to shop at the event.
The individual sororities will compete based on the total amount of items donated and sold, in addition to the number of hours volunteered. The winning chapter will receive 25% of sales to go towards the chapter’s philanthropy. The shopping event will be held Nov. 9-11 at the Fayetteville storefront, located at 245 E Township St.
This annual event originates from a Volunteer Action program to increase volunteerism among students in 2020. A member of Pi Beta Phi was paired with Beautiful Lives through the program, and from there Shop Our Closet was born. The partnership started small, with only three chapters, but has since grown with each year. For the first time, all 11 Panhellenic chapters at the University of Arkansas are a part of the challenge, as well as Phi Rho, an engineering sorority.
Danna Fields, Beautiful Lives’ volunteer program manager, said the campus involvement over the past few years has been “deeply impactful” to their mission.
“We are so grateful for the hundreds of U of A students that volunteer at Beautiful Lives during Shop Our Closet and throughout the year,” Fields said, “… these ladies show up with donations to fill the store, they help customers, they build outfits and partake in life-giving conversations.”
Fields also says that seeing sisterhood come together in this environment is a special thing to witness.
“Allowing women to connect through volunteering is just amazing, seeing them work hard towards a common goal truly lends itself to lifting women and mending community,” Fields said.
In the last year, nearly 4,000 hours were volunteered to Beautiful Lives’ Fayetteville location. Many of these hours were given by students.
“Women coming together to help and serve in our back room and throughout the store provides us the opportunity to get more clothes out, which ultimately helps women in our community find clothing at affordable prices,” Fields said.
Beautiful Lives Thrift Boutique locations are in Bentonville, Fayetteville and Siloam Springs. Interested volunteers can learn more about joining these U of A students in serving women in the community by visiting Beautiful Lives’ website.