Watson College students help develop better clothing distribution for low-income children

Inside an old warehouse in Binghamton, hundreds of boxes are stacked atop one another and fill the shelves with thousands of clothing items donated by Dick’s Sporting Goods.

Volunteers for Locker Room 345 — teachers, police officers, parents and more — work tirelessly to ensure that children in underprivileged neighborhoods can pursue their education without worrying about having something to wear.

Unfortunately, finding a way to get every item to every student in need is a difficult undertaking, even for the most kindhearted organizers.

To improve the order fulfillment process, a team of industrial and systems engineering students and computer science students from Binghamton University helped Dick’s and Locker Room 345 as a project during the 2022-23 school year.

Getting started

Kim Myers, a leader in the local Binghamton community and member of the Dick’s Sporting Goods family, founded Locker Room 345 — a charitable organization focused on clothing donations — as a way of helping children in the region.

Understanding how clothing can affect educational performance and attendance, Myers was determined to help motivate children in low-income families to feel excited about going to school.

“It saddened me to see children struggling with their basic needs while trying to pursue an education. That’s when I knew I had to start LR345,” she said. “No child should feel humiliated in the classroom.”

She also wanted to share her family’s good fortune with the community that helped build it: “My dad founded Dick’s Sporting Goods in Binghamton, and it’s only right that our family business shares its resources with the people who believed in us.”

Over the past five years, Locker Room 345 has grown exponentially, now providing clothing for children in Broome County and neighboring counties. However, Myers and her team are adamant that children’s requests are fulfilled on a one-to-one basis, so it’s become harder to fill orders efficiently.

“The only way you can ensure a child is getting what they ask for is if you fill an order with them in mind. Because we’re expanding, we’re getting so many orders, and it’s become incredibly difficult to fill all of them by hand,” Myers said. “The faster we can fill and process orders, the more children we can help.”

All about teamwork

Applying their industrial and systems engineering knowledge, members of one of Binghamton University’s senior project groups in the Thomas J. Watson College of Engineering and Applied Science were also determined to provide relief.

“We’re working on optimizing their warehouse processes in hopes that it will help further the reach of Locker Room 345,” said team leader Nicole Dates ‘23. “The work Kim Myers and her team are doing is incredible, and we were happy to help in any way that we can.”

“Thirty-three percent of Binghamton residents live below the poverty line,” said Izabella Bostina ’23. “There’s a huge wealth disparity there, and it’s crucial that people in our position do what we can to make sure those students feel good about going to school.”

Prior to the ISE team’s involvement, Myers and her team had to rely on Excel spreadsheets and emails to coordinate with educators requesting apparel for their students.

“The timeliness of different orders and accurate inventory-pulling was difficult because of the sheer volume of requests, so we wanted to create an interface that would make the warehouse more efficient,” said team member Connor Lounsbery ’23. “This would make it easier for LR345 to aid as many children as possible.”

School to warehouse, warehouse to student

Since the warehouse is only half of the operation, Myers, her team and the Binghamton students were intent on creating a more efficient way for educators to submit requests.

“When teachers have to fill out orders by hand, it takes longer to address the needs of each student,” Myers said. “Sometimes, they’ll even request items that we don’t have anymore. It’s heartbreaking to not be able to give a child what they need.”

As the web development team, Mohammed-Khalil Ghali, MS ’24, and Srimadhaven Thirumurthy ‘23, used their knowledge of computer science to help the team design an e-commerce website that allows educators to see the warehouse inventory when placing an order for a student.

“Now there will be no confusion regarding what the warehouse has, and each child can be guaranteed what was requested for them,” Ghali said.

Locker Room 345 is open to any child from any school or educational institution. However, Myers said, “it must be one on one. Schools can’t come to us and say they need 50 pairs of shoes. We serve the individual. Different children need different things.

“There are children out there who don’t go to school because they have holes in their shoes or can’t afford a jacket for the winter months. One student was so happy when we were able to give him a new sweatshirt for the school year. He said, ‘I’ve never owned anything with tags on it before.’”

With Professor Sangwon Yoon from Watson College’s Systems Science and Industrial Engineering Department as their advisor, members of the ISE senior project group designed a mobile app that would offer more accessibility for volunteers and educators working on relief programs.

“Teachers can place orders through their phone, and orders can now be processed at any time of day,” Yoon said. “Children won’t have to suffer the same way.”

Efficient community service

Receiving regular shipments from Dick’s Sporting Goods’ warehouses, LR345 volunteers sometimes will spend an entire day processing hundreds of articles of clothing that will be distributed to students when orders are filled in the following weeks.

“I’m inspired every day by all of the people who come out to help,” Myers said. “I know it’s oftentimes exhausting, and it’s amazing that so many people are so determined to offer their support.”

As Locker Room 345 continues to grow, it was important to the team that the new software could accommodate a high frequency of requests.

“Currently, this software can accommodate a process with 60 schools,” Aigin Hertel-Bernstein ’23 said. “If it ends up raising to 120 or even 150 schools next year, it will be able to scale up accordingly.”

What started as a senior project has become so much more for everyone involved, and the ISE students would like to see other Watson College senior project groups do similar work in the future.

“It might take years and years for every child in need to be offered the support that we’d like to see provided,” Tyler Lounsbery ’23 said. “Knowing that it all started here with devoted community leaders and a handful of University students will hopefully remind people that there’s always an opportunity to give back.”

Because the students were able to design a successful software interface, they are hopeful that other engineers will use this technology to aid other community service groups.

“We developed this interface in a way that can be applied to a number of organizational efforts,” Thirumurthy said. “We hope that other organizations also use it to uplift their communities.”

Yoon added: “This is why we do research. There is no point of conducting academic research if it doesn’t help other human beings and society as a whole.”

Reflecting on Locker Room 345’s collaboration with Binghamton University, Myers is grateful to the students for their help.

“I just can’t believe the University has been this good to us,” she said. “We would not have been able to make such positive change without them.”