The Ropero collected 2,666,000 million pesos in clothing sales, from October 30th to November 1st, which will be donated to JKS student scholarships and was organized by the foundation coordinator, Sonia Franco.

Several members of the school, such as general service staff, students and teachers, bought clothes donated by the students’ parents. Clothing that is not sold is donated to the Emergency Section, through the current Antioquia corporation.

“The leftovers of the ropero, like that of the mercadito, goes to humanitarian attention of natural disaster effects,” Polanco said. 

Those in charge of keeping these clothes well maintained need to ensure that there is no damage or dirt in the clothes, in order to establish a good quality of sale where every year there can be more income for the foundation. 

“I have always seen that when Sonia collects clothes or subjects from donation she is responsible for cleaning them and washing them, also, they often repair and sew them. Many times they repair the damaged toys if needed, so they don’t open the ropero with bad quality of garments,” Gloria Vélez, middle school art teacher, said.

These clothes are donated by the students and their parents. There are boxes all around the different sections of the school in which students can place the clothes they want to donate in order for the foundation staff to assemble and later place in the ropero.  

“At this moment the clothes arrive and I classify them because there are some that arrive dirty, others in poor condition. Then I make all that selection, and begin to store the clothes in boxes. When these boxes are all organized and classified then we hang them in the ropero,” Franco said. 

The ropero is done twice every year. This year’s sales expectations were higher than the originally sold clothes, and the foundation hopes that next year the sales will be higher. 

“We had a collection of 2,666,000 thousand pesos, but we expected to collect 4,500,000 thousand pesos this four days.” Franco said. 

In recent years, the foundation has been able to collect more money by selling clothes in the ropero in comparison to this year’s sell. Although sales were high, they were not high enough to meet expectations. Even the clothing prices increased compared to last year, and with the change in price, the desired result could not be obtained.

It seemed to me that this time there were fewer clothes than last year, and I don’t know if it’s because the space was smaller or not enough clothes were collected. Another thing that I saw were the prices, in the past years the prices were more significant, such as $1000, $2000, $3000 thousand pesos, and this year the prices were from $5000 to $10,000 thousand pesos. So the prices increased and the quantity of clothes decreased,” Vélez said.

This is the first year in which the clothes that are not sold are donated to a helpful cause, to families that have been affected by these disasters in Colombia.

“That’s something new when I got here to school. And we will continue to do so every year,” Polanco said.