Photo courtesy of Encore Thrift Shop.
The Assistance League of Birmingham’s Encore Thrift Shop on Oxmoor Road in Homewood has expanded its size.
The Assistance League of Birmingham recently completed an expansion of its Encore Thrift Shop to help more children in need throughout greater Birmingham.
For decades, Encore Thrift Shop on Oxmoor Road was part craft store, part thrift store, serving the community as a recreational and social outlet for retirees and senior citizens. However, Assistance League of Birmingham President Katharine Nichols said interest in crafting has waned in recent years, while mission-focused thrift stores have increased in popularity.
Nichols said the Assistance League Board of Directors decided to change Encore Thrift Shop’s mission by expanding the shop’s footprint and its ability to serve more underserved schoolchildren.
“This year, we went for a big change because we were just seeing a decline in crafting, and so we decided thrifting is big, and so we made the switchover around Christmas and opened back up in January,” Nichols said.
Supporting the Assistance League’s Operation School Bell, Encore Thrift Store provides clothing and other essentials to children identified by their school counselors. Since the program’s founding in 1985, Operation School Bell has provided clothing for more than 35,000 children — around 1,500 per year — throughout metropolitan Birmingham.
Through Operation School Bell, school counselors identify children in need in kindergarten through fifth grade, and the kids are brought to the Encore Thrift Shop by school bus. There, the children are allowed to shop and try on new clothes in a private dressing room, with the help of an Assistance League volunteer.
Since the environment resembles a department store or boutique rather than a sterile, nonprofit environment, shopping for their clothing is fun for the children, Nichols and Assistance League member and volunteer Kay Frazier said.
“They’re excited after they’ve gotten all these new clothes, and then we give them a new book. Some of them never had something like that,” Nichols said. “We give them coloring books and crayons, things that are fun, along with the clothes. Then, they get back on their bus and they go back to their school, and the way we make the money to do that is our thrift store.”
Nichols said one recent kindergartener was “grinning from ear to ear” when he came out of the dressing room in his first outfit.
“His teacher looked at me and said, ‘That’s the first time I’ve ever seen him smile,’” Nichols said.
“When they come here and get new clothes, they feel better about themselves. It really affects their self-esteem,” Frazier said.
Additionally, the thrift shop assists children in middle school, meeting the child and family members at a local clothing store, where they are given a $150 gift card to choose clothes with the guidance of family members and Assistance League volunteers.
Encore Thrift Shop also donates clothing and coats to schools for their clothes closets, as well as supplying clothing and other essential items to families after experiencing an emergency such as a fire or flood.
Frazier said the income from the thrift shop and other annual fundraising efforts helps to fund Operation School Bell and its other services. There are still many more people in the surrounding communities who need their help, she said.
“We had a panel at our fundraiser recently, and they really enlightened us even more than what we knew, because we sit here and Homewood in the middle of this very affluent area and within five miles, there are many, many people in need,” Frazier said. “That is our goal is to see that no child has to go to school in raggedy clothes.”
Encore Thrift Shop is located at 1755 Oxmoor Road in Homewood. Hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Learn more about the Assistance League of
Birmingham at assistanceleague.org/birmingham.
