Artisans' Hope hoping for management

For the past four months the Artisans' Hope gift shop has been able to survive with only the help of its five student workers from EMU. Since the three managers left the Gift and Thrift store near the beginning of the semester, the student workers have struggled to keep the store alive.

Last February Artisans' Hope moved from its downtown location of 20 years to its current location across the street from Eastern Mennonite High School's sports fields.

Near the beginning of the semester the managing couple left their positions abruptly. Soon after that, the only other part time manager left the gift shop too. This left only the five student workers, Katrina Martin, Kara Bender, Deborah Green, Sara Brenneman, and Galen Wenger of EMU to take control of the small gift shop.

The Artisans' Hope is a part of Gift and Thrift, which now includes A World of Good Thrift Shop. World of Good is a Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) thrift shop, whose money goes to benefit MCC. Book Savers, which takes donated books and sells them on the internet or in Gift and Thrift stores, are also part of Artisans' Hope gift shop.

Karen Blosser is currently acting as the fill-in manager until the end of December. Blosser was originally put in place to be fill-in manager of the Gift and Thrift part of the store, but she is currently managing the entire store to the best of her abilities. John Spicher, who is the chair of the board of Gift and Thrift and is also on the search committee, is hoping to find a new manager as soon as possible.

Because the situation has drawn up controversy, many of the people connected with the Gift and Thrift shop did not want to comment on the situation. One of the students did say that, "The biggest challenge as work study students is that we aren't getting 'orders' from anyone. We are all doing what we can, but there isn't anyone that's there all the time and can oversee what we are doing. So it's like there are five separate people trying to keep this thing up and running, but we don't always have good communication between us."

Another student did agree that there is a lack of communication, but said that the store will be able to survive.