2nd Chance Sells Used Work Clothes, Benefits Dominican School
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Jordan Fouts-
2nd Mile Missions and the Wildman Business Group are using pre-owned work clothes to fund help for hundreds of Haitian school children in the Dominican Republic. Since a visit in 2006, members of the Wildman family have been supporting a school campus in Bavaro, Dominican Republic, that educates more than 800 students, many of them the children of refugees from the 2010 Haiti earthquake. It takes about $30,000 a month to operate the schools as well as an orphanage on the campus housing eight children, according to Josh Wildman, CEO of Wildman Business Group. The company encourages its employees to get involved with 2nd Mile and the Bavaro school, and used to hold garage sales to help fund their trips. In January, they opened the 2nd Chance Store in the Lakeview Shopping Center to raise money by selling used uniforms and other work clothes. “To help (employees) get there, we give them the opportunity to earn money for the trip by selling used products,” said Josh Wildman. “We’ll get them there no matter what, but they have to earn the opportunity.” The volunteer-run store, which is open Saturdays from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., offers everything from jeans, coveralls and polo shirts to rugs, rags and chef and lab coats, all items that had to be taken out of service but still have a useful life. A lot of it has heavy-duty work in mind, such as mechanics, painters and drywallers – “People who are going to tear through their work clothes,” Josh Wildman said. The storefront was his idea, after reasoning that they have more used products than they can get rid of. “Rather than let them go to waste, I wanted to put them to good use where they can help some people.” When Nancy Wildman and her husband, Rod – both teachers – first visited the schools available in Bavaro, she said they were one-room buildings with no supplies or chalkboards. A formal education was something new and unfamiliar for many of the kids. “The Holy Spirit convicted us to get involved, and we decided it was a no-brainer,” she said. The first group of 30 or so students grew to 100 to 150 after about two years, as the facilities were expanded on the property of the church run by Pastor Pascual Borrell. The head of Church of God for the Nations, he has been working with the Wildman family from the beginning. “The transformation over the last decade has been radical in those communities,” Josh Wildman said. They plan to keep growing the campus, by expanding the orphanage to accommodate 12 girls and providing employment opportunities, especially for women with children. They also want to give opportunities to girls who have been pulled out of sex trafficking – Destiny Rescue, a North Webster-based organization that fights international child sex slavery, set up operations in the Dominican Republic last year. “There are no social services, nothing for people with kids to do,” Nancy Wildman said. “We know a lot of talented students and moms. They’re capable, they’re talented, they just need an outlet.”
