Tom Cooper stands in front of a truckload of donated items for the Exchange. (The Herald/Submitted Photo)

After helping with mission trips in Africa, a local couple has decided to bring the same models of service to their own community.

Paul Danis, co-founder of The Exchange @ LIVE-IT, said the primary mission of the non-profit thrift store is to get people involved in helping their neighbor.

“We saw people in Africa who didn’t have much of anything, but they still made the effort to help their neighbors plant a garden or with some other need,” Danis said. “I wanted to use that concept as the basis for this project and encourage people to pass the community support along.”

A former nurse by trade, Danis explained the LIVE-IT project as a mixture of Habitat for Humanity and Extreme Makeover without the extreme element.

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