State College retail store The Family Clothesline usually sells gear colored blue and white.
After watching the devastating stories coming out of Ukraine over the past two weeks, the store now is promoting a shirt with a different colored design — blue and yellow, the colors of the Ukrainian flag.
For every Stand With Ukraine T-shirt sold, the store pledges to donate $10 to support the Ukrainian people.
“We watched the situation unfold and felt the need and the call and wanted to do something to help,” Caroline Gummo, chief operating officer, said. In the past, the store had success with producing fundraising shirts on the local and national level. “We wanted to take that concept to provide whatever financial assistance we could to the Ukrainian people.”
The stylish shirt was designed by the store’s head graphic designer, Leah Lucci, who has Ukrainian family heritage. The shirt features a yellow sunflower — Ukraine’s national flower — overlapped by a blue peace symbol. Below, the internet hashtag, “#standwithukraine”, is spelled out with alternating blue and yellow colors. The design is available on black and white T-shirts with either long or short sleeves.
The $10 donations from each purchase will be sent to USA for UNHCR — The UN Refuge Agency, which will provides critical supplies like medicine, clean water, food and tents to desperate children and families displaced because of the crisis.
“We selected this organization because it has already been established in the area and had an infrastructure in place to be able have a quick reaction…so we know the money will be quickly distributed for supplies that are needed currently,” Gummo said.
She said the response from the community has been “fantastic.”
As of mid-day on Wednesday, the store had sold more than 300 of the shirts, with a goal of surpassing 1,000 by the end of the week.
Gummo said the Penn State and State College communities “are fantastic at being able to raise money for events and tragedies that affect the world. I am not sure what it is specifically, but I think we are very empathetic about what is going on in the rest of the world and just want to do our part, however small it is, to try to do something to help.”
Giving back is part of the history of The Family Clothesline, she said, and “we always want to do our part, whenever we can and are capable of, to help. So, it means a lot of to be able to our part so we feel like we are doing something instead of watching the news.”
The shirts are available for purchase online, and in limited supply in-store at 352 E. College Ave. Gummo said she hopes to restock in-store by Friday.
This story appears in the March 10-16, 2022 edition of the Centre County Gazette.
