By Jaymes Ginn – Professor of Marketing Shelly McVay, along with students Ryan Hiatt, Ty Pratt, Dalton Dye, Sarah Lewis, and others, will be working throughout the semester with Adalante Thrift, in the Kansas City area, to aid in the development of the Adalante Thrift brand.

Adalante Thrift is a local nonprofit company that is committed to empowering immigrants and refugees in the local community. The company first opened in 2015, and initially struggled, before reaching success after three years of business. The Adalante Thrift Store in Kansas City, Kansas will allow students at Jewell to participate in the development of their branding, logos, tag lines, and supporting rationale, in order to gain hands-on experience working with a professional nonprofit company in Kansas City. They will also be creating supportive physical collateral pieces such as brochures, posters, fliers, coupons, buttons, and bags, as well as collaborating with local TV, radios, and forms of social media for advertisement of their work. Students will gain hands-on knowledge and experience which will boost their portfolios, as well as credit towards potential Act-In majors’ Reflective Citizenship requirement. The Adalante Thrift also gains meaningful employment at no cost to them, as well as potential interns for successful students.

Professor McVay believes this project exemplifies a component of the William Jewell College mission – critical thinking that benefits others. The service learning project consistently ranks in the top three things that students taking her course truly enjoy. It allows them to put all the pieces of developing a marketing strategy together in a realistic scenario. The project is one of many that bring value to the William Jewell experience, as well as bringing value to the business program here at Jewell.