Third-graders Solymar Selim and Jahida Sferrazza couldn’t decide what they wanted. There were too many choices.

Browsing through the offerings at Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary School’s store of donated clothes — called Unique Boutique — the pair of friends examined dresses and shirts, shoes and socks, hats, gloves, scarves, jackets and toiletries. But as their time in the school store wound down, they were still empty-handed.

“We don’t know what to get,” Jahida said after they finished sifting through a bin of clothes waiting to be sorted and hung on one of a dozen racks distributed throughout the classroom-turned-shop.  Read More