CORPUS CHRISTI — The Purple Door announced they will open a re-sale store.
The non-profit helps domestic and sexual abuse survivors by providing them shelter, food and resources to get them back on their feet.
“We don’t do this work alone,” Francis Wilson, the president and CEO of The Purple Door said. “We do this work with the help of our community and so that is that opportunity.”
Wilson said the opportunity is for both the public and the families they serve.
“Any of the families that we serve are going to get the items they need,” Kellie Addison, the deputy director of non-profit, said. “That’s first and foremost.”
Addison told KRIS 6 News the items will be free to them.
“Not only will the items still benefit our clients as they always have, but now we’ll be able to sell some items and make some money and put that money directly back into programming,” Wilson said. “So, it really serves a two-fold purpose.”
“That’s just an added resource that will now be available to them and kind of relieve them of the stress that they may have in life right now,” Kayla Mahler, a nursing student at Texas A&M University Corpus Christi, said.
Mahler and fellow nursing student Tyler Bourdo had just dropped of a $300 check and diapers, clothes and other donations to the Purple Door’s Office.
Organizer said by April, they will collect take donations like those to stock the store.
Wilson said, many times, the women, children and other survivors show up on their doorstep with little to nothing.
“Maybe with whatever they could fit in a suitcase because they’ve just chosen to escape so they didn’t have time to bring anything,” Wilson said. “They’re starting a new life and they need some housewares and housewares and things like that for a new an apartment.
Wilson said the money they get from sales will help fill the gaps between their grants and other funding they receive.
“This is going to allow us to continue advocacy services, accompaniment, counseling, our shelter services, our prevention and education work,” Addison said.
The Purple Door officials said they look forward to opening the re-sale doors to the public.
“They’ll be able to still learn about what we do,” Wilson said. “They’ll be contributing to the work we do.”
Wilson said they’ve secured a location and will be making an announcement soon.
As of March 30, they were still looking for staff.
“To know that people are donating to this, that just sends a message to them that their community cares about them,” Wilson said.
The Purple Door will begin taking donations to stock the shop by mid-April and hope to be open to the public by early June.
The Purple Door opened in 1977 and provides free, confidential services to people in their emergency shelter and in the community.
Their 40 employees throughout five offices in Corpus Christi, Alice, Beeville, Kingsville and Sinton.
They help families in the Aransas, Bee, Brooks, Duval, Jim Wells, Kenedy, Kleberg, Live Oak, McMullen, Nueces, Refugio, and San Patricio counties.
