A red double decker bus rolled into West Campus on Wednesday as part of an effort to raise awareness of orphan care and an orphan crisis in society.
This project, dubbed the Red Bus Project, is the student awareness branch of Show Hope — a non-profit orphan care organization that gives grants to families that are adopting orphans. As part of a four-week tour, the Red Bus Project visits universities in Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas.
Student Initiatives Program Coordinator Brooke Lyle said the red bus is a mobile thrift store that accepts student donations into its inventory.
“We’ve converted the bottom and top floor,” Lyle said. “There are clothing racks and everything. All the clothes are donation-based, which is cool, so we can keep doing this because college students are supporting us and giving us clothes to be able to sell.”
The project and its staff spend a day at each campus they visit and jump around from city to city, Lyle said.
“The interns and the staff ride on top of the bus and then we have a truck behind us that carries our gear, so it’s kind of like a little caravan,” Lyle said.
Lyle said the bus itself is used to grab the attention of the college students.
“We’re here to use that as a tool to get people’s attention and then be able to tell them, ‘Every 10 seconds a child becomes an orphan and we’re not okay with that,’” Lyle said.
Lyle said the project’s staff receives help with overnight arrangements from organizations of the different campuses they visit.
“We stay at hotels or with host families so it’s kind of like the organization that hosts us from wherever we are will help us with finding places to stay or we’ll just stay in hotels,” Lyle said.
Andrew Aguilar, engineering technology junior, is a co-director for the newly formed student organization Ags For Orphans, which seeks to connect the Aggie family to those who don’t have a family. Aguilar said the Red Bus Project reached out to him after being referred by a similar organization at Baylor University.
“So they connected them to us and they reached out to me and I was their advocate to get them on campus, just because they have the same mindset as our organization and they fight to make aware the crisis at hand with orphans,” Aguilar said.
wherever we are will help us with finding places to stay or we’ll just stay in hotels,” Lyle said.
Andrew Aguilar, engineering technology junior, is a co-director for the newly formed student organization Ags For Orphans, which seeks to connect the Aggie family to those who don’t have a family. Aguilar said the Red Bus Project reached out to him after being referred by a similar organization at Baylor University.
“So they connected them to us and they reached out to me and I was their advocate to get them on campus, just because they have the same mindset as our organization and they fight to make aware the crisis at hand with orphans,” Aguilar said.
Aguilar said it’s a good opportunity for Ags For Orphans to work with a project like the Red Bus Project.
“We can show our heart and make known that there are kids around the world that don’t have a mother or father that don’t have a voice,” Aguilar said. “It’s more about that. It’s hard to gauge that success, but I think having a British double decker red bus is a pretty sweet way to get attention on a college campus.”
Nathan Moore, kinesiology senior, won a contest for free items.
“Free clothes, free t-shirts, free stuff,” Moore said. “They spin on the iPad and you get a piece of paper if you win, and I won, so I get a free bucket of clothes. You just fill it up. It’s pretty cool.”
The Red Bus Project’s next stop is Houston. Lyle, who applied to be an intern last year, said she has enjoyed the experience of seeing the faces of orphans adopted by their “forever families.”
“The red bus came to my school,” Lyles said. “I went to school in Tennessee whenever I was in college, and honestly I think that you always hear about orphans and orphanages but I’ve never really realized the weight of it.”