Community Donation Store Coming to Sigourney

SIGOURNEY – A non-profit “free store” named Agape Shop is set to open in Sigourney this summer. The store, to be located on the west side of the Sigourney square, will distribute clothing and household goods to anybody who needs them

“Our mission statement is to help meet needs, inspire hope, extend grace to all who walk through our doors,” said Susan Ross, chairman of Master Helpers, the group building the free store. “We want to give a place for anybody to shop that’s struggling to meet the demands of today’s financial strain. Basically, that’s almost everyone. A place of no judgment. It doesn’t matter what your income is, where you’re from. Just to come and help them. It frees up money when they need to pay for rest and gas and groceries and this will help families and individuals to be able to shop and free up some money for things that they really need. So basically, anybody can come in and get what they want at no cost.”

“Community, really, defined by me is not just Sigourney,” continued Ross. “It is the people that are like-minded like we are. And also, the people in Sigourney we’ve met so far have all been very positive about wanting to help. And so we’re just kind of all on the same common denominator that we want to help people. Serve people in the community, the community being all areas around here.”

“How we really want this to be understood from the community is that it’s not promoted by a church or the Ministerial Alliance,” said Joe Hohenshell, another member of the group. “We want it to be owned by the community. We want the community to support it...We really want the community to understand it’s their opportunity to be able to give back to the community itself...So obviously, our hopes and faith in this is that they will see that and want to join in on helping their own community.”