CELEBRATING HOME

REIMAGINED CHAIRS, FURNISHINGS, AND ONE-OF-A-KIND FINDS ARE ON DISPLAY IN DESIGNER-CREATED ROOMS AT THE GREEN CHAIR PROJECT’S ANNUAL CHAIRITY FUNDRAISER.

WRITTEN BY DANA W. TODD

Where there is great need, someone must rise to the occasion. The champion in this case is The Green Chair Project, an organization that takes donated home furnishings and home goods and reimagines them to furnish homes for families in Wake County. “Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in,” said writer and naturalist John Muir. It is a fitting description for the work Green Chair does. The non-profit organization is expanding its annual fundraising event, 2022 Chairity: Celebrating Home, to address the increasing needs of families living without basic essentials. This year’s event takes place September 16–17.

“WE ARE IN THE BUSINESS OF TURNING HOUSING INTO HOMES.”

—JACKIE CRAIG

“This ten-year anniversary event is bigger and better,” says Green Chair CEO Jackie Craig. “This is our tenth year hosting interior designers who will redesign donated chairs to be auctioned off to help support our mission of providing fully equipped households for families trying to break the cycles of homelessness, domestic violence, and other hardship situations such as being a refugee. We also have added an exciting new showroom of twelve different fully curated and designed rooms by some of the area’s most talented interior designers. The public will have a chance to shop these rooms and products supplied by many companies in the home furnishings industry.”

Shoppers attending the two-day event can view these professionally designed rooms—from bedrooms to game rooms to dining rooms and everything in between— featuring both designer-curated furniture and new home goods as well as repurposed donations from Green Chair’s showroom. “Each designer creates a story about the room being designed,” Craig says, “whether that’s a beach cottage or a farmhouse-chic living room.”

The need for furnishings and basic necessities that support healthy and sustainable living has increased greatly post-pandemic. “We are serving families at record numbers, furnishing over thirty households per week where in recent years we were furnishing thirty per month,” Craig says. The increased need is the driving factor in Green Chair’s decision to expand its annual fundraiser into a legacy event. Craig is especially proud that proceeds from 2022 Chairity will also increase the number of new beds the organization can provide to children who don’t have a bed of their own through its

Support the 2022 Chairity event by visiting THEGREENCHAIR.ORG/CHAIRITY-2022. Jackie Craig Chief Executive Officer

Sweeter Dreams program. “There are six thousand children in Wake County without a bed who are sleeping on the floor. Everyone deserves to sleep in a bed,” she says.

“Every part of a home—a table and chairs to share a meal, a lamp to read a nighttime story, a chair to sit and rest after a long day, and a bed to rest a weary head—is practical, functional, beautiful, and feeds souls with dignity. We are in the business of turning housing into homes.” u