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Faith helps man turn trash into treasure


David Corner sorts through school supplies and other donated items that will be shipped to people in need around the world. UMNS photos by Kim Griffis.

By Kathy L. Gilbert*
Nov. 12, 2008

David Corner has a unique talent—he sees treasure where others only see trash.

As founder of the Gathering Project, Corner, 73, is constantly turning “garbage into gold” by diverting items meant for landfills to people in need around the world.

A Tacoma, Wash., warehouse is filled with the “junk” the United Methodist layman has collected from friends, schools, hospitals and many other places. He celebrates when he finds surplus or slightly outdated supplies he knows will be life-changing in the right hands.


A shipping container is packed
full of donated items.

Corner gestures to a package of surgical supplies in the warehouse and compares it to gold.

“The Gathering Project was founded to collect, distribute and send donated goods anywhere in the world that they were needed,” he explains. “School supplies, medical supplies, and other equipment and supplies are needed to relieve suffering in emerging countries.”

Recently, the Gathering Project was awarded the Greater Tacoma Peace Prize. Corner will attend the Nobel Peace Prize activities in Oslo, Norway, this December.

Ron Clogston, a hospital worker who helps out, says Corner has “a good heart for helping people, so we’re happy to work with him.” The project also saves local hospitals thousands of dollars a year in dump fees, Clogston points out, adding that he feels good that their discards provide healing for others.

Seeing the need

The project started a decade ago, after Corner visited Africa and saw first-hand how people were in desperate need for what many people in the United States throw away.

For example, children in many parts of the world don’t go to school because their parents can’t afford to buy paper and pencils or pay the $5 school fee, he explains. Women stand in line all night to get a bucket of water when most Americans can just turn on a tap and have fresh water. “We’re a throwaway society,” he says.


Corner oversees the loading of supplies.

Corner was asked to be a keynote speaker for a men’s fellowship in Ghana. He spent six weeks there and realized he could collect “junk out of my buddies’ garages” and raise the standard of living in that African country.

After returning home, Corner started rummaging through his friends’ closets and garages, looking for useful items. Then, he went to hospitals, schools and government agencies asking for donations from the supplies they discard.

By his count, he has now shipped more than 150 containers to 46 different countries.

The grandson of a Methodist Circuit Rider preacher and nephew of a missionary to India, Corner grew up in the church. He was a statewide youth officer, attended two Methodist-related colleges and has worked with The United Methodist Board of Discipleship and United Methodist Men. He currently is a member of Mason United Methodist Church in Tacoma.

*Gilbert is a United Methodist News Service news writer based in Nashville, Tenn.

News media contact: Kathy L. Gilbert, Nashville, Tenn., (615) 742-5470 or newsdesk@umcom.org.

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Resources

The Gathering Project

Mason United Methodist Church


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