On Monday in the Sacramento State Library Quad, students from the Educational Opportunity Program held a coat drive for the Sacramento Valley Indian Alliance. They will be collecting new or gently used jackets and coats Tuesday and Thursday to be delivered to California Indian Reservations.

The students will be at tables to collect donations in front of the University Union and in front of Lassen Hall. They will be out from 10 a.m. until 3 p.m.

After promoting all week, donations were coming in slow, said Chong Yang, an undeclared student. A few donations have been received but students are just now becoming aware of the drive and they expect more donations Tuesday and Thursday.

All sizes and styles are being accepted. They are asking for coats and jackets for men, women and children.

“We need all kinds of coats, but they have to be clean,” Cindy Thao, biology major said. “We’re looking for help from everybody around the campus to donate coats.”

This event is being put on by students from multiple learning skills classes. Students enrolled in LS 39B, “Group Tutorial in Special Problems for EOP Students” were instructed to conduct this coat drive as a special project which required the participation of the entire class.

“The Sacramento Valley Indian Alliance are doing a coat drive so we decided to help and have our kids participate,” said Vanessa Esquivido, Anthropology and Ethnic Studies major and teacher’s assistant for the Learning Skills class.

Each class came together with ideas and tools for marketing and ways to attract people on campus to donate, Esquivido said. Through those ideas the students designed flyers and bought chalk to use as advertisement for the drive.

The EOP students decorated the ground and the table with the bright colored chalk and had one of the students yelling out “coat drive today!” to grab people’s attention to their project.

One class came up with the idea for a raffle and each student donated $2 of their own money towards raffle prizes as an incentive for people to make donations.

Every time a coat or a jacket is donated the person can enter their name to the raffle for a chance to win a $10 gift card to the Hornet Bookstore. Enough money was raised to purchase three cards. The raffle will be held on Thursday.

“I wasn’t aware of the drive until today,” Jessica McKinney, freshman communications major said. “I heard some of the people on the reservation camps are really poor so I think doing this is a really good idea and the raffle is like a bonus.”

On Saturday, Esquivido and another TA are going to gather all of the coats and jackets they’ve collected and drop them off to the Indian Alliance which will eventually be delivered to the Indian reservations.

“Basically we’re out here because it’s a class requirement for us to do this but we do want to be out here too,” Yang said. “It makes us feel like we actually did something for the community.”

Gina Cruz can be reached at [email protected].