Dec My Dorm gives away sheet sets, pillows, shower caddies and other essentials at an annual summer event
When Ar’reiona Green was accepted to Sacramento State last year, she knew she would need books and school supplies. She didn’t expect to need a toolbox. Or hangers. Or that her dorm room wouldn’t come with a fan or a lamp.
Like many first-year students, Green, who is headed into her sophomore year and plans to become a plastic surgeon, was excited about her future adventures. But coming up through the foster system in California, she didn’t know anyone who had gone to college. While she felt ready for her classes, life as a college student was mostly mysterious except for what she’d seen online.
That’s where Dec My Dorm stepped in. The program works with more than 140 foster youth headed to college, hosting an annual event in July to kit out each student with sheet sets, pillows, a shower caddy and connections to other people in the same situation.
Green took part in the summer of 2024, leaving with several duffel bags filled with the things she needed, including many items she didn’t know she would need, like dish soap.
“I was expecting bed stuff and towels,” Green said. “I wasn’t expecting them to give me period products and school supplies. They were giving out school merch and stepping stools and toolboxes. They really went above and beyond.”
The program started in 2018 when Jill Franklin, a program manager of the Independent Living Program for the department of children and family services in Los Angeles county, met a student who came from the foster system. The young woman described arriving at the University of California at Berkeley with just a trash bag, not knowing that dorm rooms are spartan affairs with a desk, chair, bed with an oddly sized mattress – and that’s it.
“She didn’t have a pillow or a sheet or a towel, and everybody else was there with their parents and their bags of stuff,” Franklin said. “At the time, I was editing college essays and I realized, we never ever thought about that first day.”
Franklin started with a small Amazon wishlist and a handful of students. It was particularly important that the kids were involved in the process as much as possible, she said, because they were used to living in spaces that were not their own.
“You might have a 17-year-old who’s on the football team and says: ‘I don’t want Minnie Mouse sheets,’ but oh well, that’s what it is, and they probably aren’t going to be there for very long and it’s not their bedroom,” said Franklin. “It was very important that they pick their own bedding, their own towels and their own blankets, so that when they walk in that room, or someone else walks in that room, it says: ‘This is who I am.’”
