 and welcome to In The Studio. I'm your host, Martha Teter, and today we're going to be talking about the Aggie Reuse Center, as you see the banner back here, and I want to introduce you to my guests, Miukia Haleen over here, and Lauren Kavantec in the middle, and Vivian over here. Welcome, thank you so much for coming. I think that folks are going to be really excited about the things we talked about today. Well, tell me a little bit about the store, about the Aggie Reuse Store. Thank you for inviting us here today, Martha. Aggie Reuse Store, we are a thrift shop on campus at UC Davis. We sell clothing, accessories, upcycle, repurpose items, craft supplies, and much more, and we also hold craft workshops and outreach events throughout the year. Wow, great. Yeah, we're open Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., so it's open to the public, not just students can come, but also members from the Davis community and any visitors onto campus. And also, we're entirely student run, and one of our major components of our program is our upcycling component, and upcycling is basically the act of taking something old and turning it to something of higher value, and so students take our donated supplies and turn them into a decoration that we use to decorate the store, as well as things that could be sold, as well. Great, I believe we have some slides that give a little bit of a tour of the of the Aggie Reuse Center, so let's see if we can check out a little bit of those. So what's this here? That's... Right, so that's our storefront. We have clothing items outside, as well as some house square and bags that are also located outside. Generally, we also have our sale items, so if you have a special sale going on, like this Friday we have our hauler for a dollar sale, so we'll have dollar clothing items outside for the viewers to look at. Great, great. Okay, let's see some of the other stuff that there is in the store, or this one's outside. Right, those are our party supplies that were actually donated to us by the student government, so they had leftover items from festivals that they had on campus, and then they give that to us so that we can distribute it back to the community. Okay. You know, those are our dollar water bottles. We get those from the donation sites around campus, like the lost and found, from the community centers around campus, as well as just donations from students as well. Okay, great. And right over there, we also have our clothing items, so we get shirts, t-shirts, dresses, books that you can see on the bottom shelf, as well as pants and skirts. And then we have a lot of office supplies and small electronics like chargers, old cell phones, and envelopes, stickers, craft supplies, pens. You name it, we've got it. And then we also have jewelry, so like rings and small accessories, as well as fabric swatches that are donated to us. Okay, yeah, great. Right, and that is also our seasonal section. So we also have bike helmets because we are the city of Davis. We just have a lot of bikes around the community. And also we have like our knits, like our beanies, as well as rain boots, too. Great, great. Well, that's great. Let's take a look at also what you have in the store because I think you have some examples of things that you've made in projects. Right, so our upcycling interns, like I said before, work on a lot of decoration. They also create items of utility, but oftentimes they create items that we display around the store that also accommodates the season. So right now it's fall, so we have a lot of faulty crafts. So we can actually look at our turkey over there, which is made by one of our interns. It's made out of one of our books that we have an ex-sister on the store. And we also have, and he made, he got some construction paper and used that to make the tail of the turkey. So it's a fun way to use books that you don't really use. And this was taught in a craft workshop. So we had plenty of students making book turkeys for the holiday season. Wow, wonderful. Okay, so there's a few other things here. What about this one here? Right, so our sales interns, part of the projects that they work on is selling items that we have an excess of. For example, we have a lot of these these color swatches that were donated to us. And what we did to make them more useful for the community was making them into these calendars. Right. So we had our interns make that. Yeah, so this is for the month of November. So you can count the days till Thanksgiving. Yeah, we have some for summer as well. Yeah, you can just fill them in. Oh, okay, that's great. Okay, well tell me about how you get the stock for the store. You mentioned some on university sources. Is that your only source or is that most of what you get? A lot of what we get is from the university, but we do accept items from the community. What people can do is go onto our website and fill out a donation form. We accept clothing items, accessory items, as well as housewares like towels. And also we accept like small furniture within like the dimensions of like two by two by two. Okay. Yeah. Okay. And what about books? Books. We have a lot of books already on hand, but we do accept books as well. Okay. Even textbooks? Yes, definitely. That's like in high demand. Okay. Okay. Great. Great. So how do people find out about the website and what's going on? So that is basically what the job of the marketing and outreach interns and social media interns do. The marketing and outreach interns, they table at the M Memorial Union Quad on campus every Wednesday. So we have a table out there and they're actively reaching out with the community and talking about our upcoming events and just shop opportunities at the store. And we also have our social media platforms on our website, our Facebook and our Instagram, which our social media are in charge of posting pictures of events and publicizing for our sales. Great. So I presume this is around lunch time or some time where there would be a lot of traffic around the Quad. And faculty and staff and stuff probably come to a lot of your tabling events as well. That's great. So what about the, you mentioned something about workshops. Are those open to just students or anybody? Right. So the workshops are open to the entire Davis community, but oftentimes it's students who do come. And the workshops are just a way to encourage people to come out and make crafts and also show that to be environmentally aware, you don't need to be artistically talented or anything. These projects are really simple to make and we just want to show that to differ items from landfill. You just really have to do, you don't really have to be an artist or anything and we teach these students how to make these crafts so they learn something from our workshops. So in other words, you're educating them about reuse and to kind of spark their own creativity. I remember I saw in the store also slides that come from the photography department. What do students do with those? The photo slides. We usually use those at our tabling events as a marketing strategy to get attention and have people approach our table because that's, we found that's actually a very popular way people approach us. We lay out the photo slides on the table and everyone approaches us and asks us, oh what is this for? And then that's our kind of way to get told them about the store and more about how they can reuse recycled items. Nice, nice. So how do you get your staff for the store? I guess this is mainly student run or all student run? Yeah, so we are part of the student government at UC Davis. So we are completely student run organization and our team consists of our management team with Nicole, our unit director, me, Lauren and Vivian and we also have the marketing outreach and social media interns and then Lauren is in charge of the sales staff and Vivian is in charge of the upcycling staff and they are all completely undergraduate students with a wide range of majors and professional interests. I see. And so how do people find out about the availability of the internships or the managerial positions in fact? Yeah, so we have on the ASUCD the student government website, they have job vacancies every time around the end of the quarter. We open job applications for all the staff and the sales and upcycling and marketing team that students can join and we also publicize at our outreach events. So during tabling when people ask us about job opportunities we tell them about it and you know more about what each intern does. Great, great. So how long are these positions for like the manager positions? Well the the manager positions it's usually for the whole school year but for the volunteers it's it's for a quarter but they can choose to return for the following quarter but we accept new interns every single quarter and they can apply online like a week before a week before the quarter starts. Great. So do you have a lot of participation and interest? It sounds like you've got a great system going where you can reach out. Let's see how many years has this been going now? So we opened in 2011 but we were in a different location prior but we moved to our location at the silo just recently beginning of last year. Wow because that's so central to campus. I mean you're really right and did the sales and everything go up then? Yes definitely. I personally thought the location at the MU was a little bit secluded and now that it's at the silo we're just at the center of campus and it's really nice because there's always people passing by checking out like what we have to offer. Yeah particularly as you're close to the food and also the internet what is it the intercultural center there? There's a lot of traffic there. Yeah and there's it I noticed there is a great map on your website. Yeah so if people want to know more they can go to your website which is aggyreuse.ucdavis.edu and get some information. I guess that's where your calendar is too? Yeah we have a calendar with all our scheduled events for the quarter and it's regularly updated and our website also links to our Instagram posts so if you check our website every time we upload a new Instagram photo it will be on there. Oh great does it also link to the Facebook? I believe we have it underneath the contact information. Yeah great so what ways can people in the community participate in this? You mentioned that they could come to workshops are there other ways if they were interested they could contribute to the center? Of course they can always donate to our store filling out a form on our online website and also visiting us and checking the store out and telling others about the store and bring more people to our store. That's great yeah so then you're and you so you accept donations where you kind of set up an arrangement using this online site and I guess they can buy and then they can also come to these workshops although as you say there are a lot of students who come to those. Yeah well what is it that you would like people to take away about the aggyreuse center what's the one thing you'd really like them to remember? For me it's not really just a store it's grown into a community because we're not just people who are you know we're not just tools of labor you know we're not just working but we're also developing skill sets together as a team and in the past few years I've they've come to become part of my family as well so it's actually really nice and I really come to and we're working at the store with a great set of people. And I think I remember hearing that there are meetings of the interns regularly so that must be how this community is built as well. Yes but we also have socials which is really integral to the cohesiveness of all the teams not just within one team but across all the teams. Great any other one brief phrase? Right well we're definitely not your average store store since we do promote the idea of reuse and sustainability we always have regulars come into the store showing us their crafts that they're working on. So you kind of inspire the population. Yeah they always give us updates on what crafts they're working on sometimes they even bring in what they're working on too and it's just enjoyable experience for the people working at the store and also like the customers who come in around the same time too. I agree with what Vivian and Lauren said we're definitely not your ordinary thrift shop. I remember one time I was helping clean up for the first crafts workshop we held and some two people they attended the workshop they approached me and they asked wow this is so amazing thank you so much for hosting this crafts workshop and I was very happy to hear that because I see that all the entire staff in a team we make a big impact on campus and I think it's that sense of community that really helps motivate me. Yeah that's great well it's an outstanding important principle reuse upcycling we have limited resources on the planet and I'm really grateful for this chance to chat with you about this and to tell our viewers about the existence of the Aggie Reuse Center. I'm so glad also that you're educating students about this because starting you can't start too early as they get out on their own this will be an outstanding value. Well I thank you for joining us today and we'll be back next time with more in the studio.