MARIETTA - Carrying several pairs of blue jeans down the stairs at Marietta High School Friday afternoon, sophomore Justin Warner was asked by a fellow student, "You gonna wear all of those?"
Although Warner jokingly said he would, he was actually headed for the classroom of English teacher Gwynette Hammond to place them in a donation bin for delivery to the local Aeropostale store and eventually, homeless teenagers.
MHS's Key Club, of which Warner is president and Hammond is the adviser, is participating in Teens for Jeans, a national service project sponsored by Aeropostale and DoSomething.org. In four years, the program has collected and donated more than 1.5 million pairs of jeans.
According to DoSomething.org, a homeless youth is defined by the National Coalition for the Homeless as an individual under the age of 18 without parental, foster or institutional care. One out of every three homeless people are younger than 18 and 1.6 million to 1.7 million youth each year will experience homelessness.
Warner said there's been a good response to the effort so far.
"I've got friends that have got laundry baskets full of jeans for me," he said.
The project was suggested by fellow Key Club member Jordan Hensler after he saw Teens for Jeans mentioned online.
"I just thought it was a really cool thing," Hensler said. "Everybody has jeans they don't wear or that don't fit them."
In addition to being a service project, Teens for Jeans is a competition. The school that collects the most jeans gets $5,000, a party and a new pair of Aeropostale jeans for every student in the school.
The deadline for turning in jeans at the school is Feb. 10 but Warner said people can also take their jeans to the Aeropostale at Grand Central Mall, where they'll receive a coupon for 25 percent off a new pair of jeans. Donors can tell clerks they're contributing on behalf of Marietta High School.
