Like the majority of other high school students in their grad year, Courtney Osmond is bidding for scholarships to lead her into post-secondary education.
But the Ladysmith Secondary School graduate-to-be is combining her scholarship applications with a jeans drive for the homeless.
“I looked on studentawards.com and came across it,” said Osmond. “Aeropostale is running it, and they’re trying to raise one million pairs of jeans. It’s going on throughout Canada.”
Osmond is aiming to collect 1,000 pairs of jeans and then submit them to Aeropostale in the hopes of receiving grants not only for herself, but for the school as well.
“I’m eligible to win the school a $5,000 grant and I’ve also applied for a $4,000 scholarship that will help me get into my nursing,” she said. “I’m at 603 pairs of jeans so far so I’m really close.”
A glass box currently sits just inside the main entrance of the high school with the hundreds of jeans, already accumulated, crammed tightly inside. The box has been acting as the public storage space for all the jeans.
Once Osmond sends them all in, her fate will be left in the hands of the Aeropostale gods.
She has been actively spreading the word of her collection across the community in an attempt to gain as many pairs of jeans for her good cause.
“I put posters up all around town and talked to people in Nanaimo as well and also made statuses [on social media] to make people aware of it.”
Her competition for the pending scholarships will come from far and wide.
“I’m up against all of Canada, but they [Aeropostale] didn’t give me an exact number of where people are at, so I just have to hope.”
