Serving the Nations

As the months flew by, I decided I needed to start thinking about how I was going to promote service activities through Nations Outfitters. From the beginning, I had envisioned Nations being a cool, relevant clothing company that encouraged the concept of serving others rather than serving ourselves. I had seen the effects of this firsthand with my own family.

 

We had gone to the Yakama Native American reservation a few years ago and helped paint and refurbish their campsite. We went with our church and met other families from all over the US that were committed to helping the Yakama Indians. This experience was eye-opening for my family. On the reservation, we lived in the most basic conditions such as sleeping on the floor and working in very hot temperatures. Amazingly, by the end of the week our children wanted to stay longer and so did most of the other youth on the trip.  We experienced such a good feeling from simply helping others out! Yet everywhere you look, our culture promotes serving ourselves first.  I strongly believe that helping our youth learn to reach outside themselves to make a difference for others could be a huge step in curtailing the sky rocking depression among teenagers. All these factors led to the idea of starting our summer t-shirt campaign.

 

As we headed into the summer, I was encouraged when I ran into numerous college and high school students who were going throughout the world to serve others. I started thinking that these were the images I wanted to represent Nations. So Tricia and I worked hard to get t-shirts printed up with our Nations logo on them right before a group of youth took off for Tanzania! We ended up giving away over 200 t-shirts…gray for guys and teal for girls.  Our Nations shirts went ALL over the world! At Nations Outfitters, we believe that it is not the clothes that make you beautiful but rather what you do in those clothes.