Coming up soon, the place we all know and love, the Elgin Bargain Box, will celebrate its sixth anniversary of opening (on August 15. 2014)
Since then, the Bargain Box has grown and is not only a place to shop and bring some of your old items to, but has contributed so much to our community.
Linda Kerkman, one of the directors of the Bargain Box, shared how it came to be and the importance of it in our town.
Two years before the opening of the Bargain Box, Linda Kerkman had retired. At that time she began to think “What does the Lord want me to do?” In the two years of retirement before she started the Bargain Box, she had learned to make t-shirt diapers for the Orphan Grain Train and sent some to a friend in who worked in Tanzania who used them in the orphanages. However, the cost of sending over the boxes filled with t-shirt diapers and other necessities started to add up and she needed a source of funding for her project. As luck would have it, Kerkman saw in The Norfolk Daily News a story on some girls from Pender who started their own version of the Bargain Box. “That was the button that made this all happen.” She shared her idea with Anne Meis who contacted Tammy Schrage, who owned the business, and asked her opinion, she thought it was a great idea. So they opened their business. See this week’s Elgin Review for the complete story.
