St. Edward’s University often gives out T-shirts to students, but at the 125th anniversary, one student is looking to take them.

Junior Irma Fernandez’s Brown scholarship-winning program, Operation T, will be asking for new or gently used men and women’s shirts of all sizes, as well as children’s shirts, at the Oct. 22 anniversary celebration.

The operation all began when an idea popped into Fernandez’s mind in seconds last year, and as much as she wrestled with it, the idea wouldn’t leave her thoughts.

Standing in her closet with a towel wrapped around her wet hair while she contemplated what T-shirt she should wear to school that day, Fernandez became aware that her T-shirt collection was more extensive than she realized.

“I was going through all my T-shirts and I saw how many shirts I actually had,” Fernandez said. “Some of the shirts even had tags on them. I knew right away that I had to do something positive with these shirts.”

Fernandez contemplated donating her extra T-shirts to Goodwill or the Salvation Army, but she got the feeling that these shirts could reach further than a local thrift store.

Her persevering idea in the back of her mind slowly started to make sense. Create a service project to help the people in the country that gave her a strong family heritage: Mexico.

“I’ve done service projects in South Africa and other parts of the country, but I’ve never done something for Mexico, where my family is from,” Fernandez said.

Her initial plan was to travel to Mexico during the winter of 2009 and deliver as many shirts as she could get people to donate. However, the drug cartel situation in Mexico complicated things, and her parents didn’t feel safe with her going at that time. Fernandez decided to put her plans for her project on hold for the following summer.

During the summer, Fernandez attended LeaderShape, a St. Edward’s- sponsored event that focuses on leadership skills and personal discovery. It was there that she realized her service project could become a reality.

“Pauline Albert really helped me polish what I wanted to do with my project,” Fernandez said. “Initially, I was like a kid wanting everything, but Pauline kept pushing me to finalize my idea. Once I did, I got a lot of good feedback from the LeaderShape community.”

With a fully developed service project proposal, Fernandez figured she had nothing to lose and applied for the Brown Scholarship. The Brown Scholarship is awarded to students with a past commitment to community service, academic excellence and a community service project proposal, according to the St. Edward’s website.

“The Brown scholar process is very tedious and demanding,” Fernandez said. “If you get through the application itself, I feel like you deserve a prize.”

Fernandez made it through the first round of contention and drove down to Austin this past summer for an interview. Thinking that she rocked her interview, she went back to Dallas to wait for the final word.

Sitting at her computer a few days later, Fernandez got a call from Leslie Sans in Student Life, who informed her that she received the scholarship. Operation T was officially a reality.

“The name Operation T came into my head that day last year in my closet, along with the whole concept of the service project,” Fernandez said. “I was speechless when I found out that I got the award and that my project was going to become something.”

Initially, all shirts collected went to Santa Cecilia Church in Mexico, a church that many of Fernandez’s aunts were married in, but now Operation T has teamed up with Alternative Spring Break, Campus Ministry, and International Immersion, as well as Invisible Children, Social Justice and Service Outreach to distribute shirts everywhere.

In May, Fernandez will travel to India with St. Edward’s International Immersion program to hand-deliver shirts to orphanages she visits.

“That was my goal initially,” Fernandez said. “I want people to see a face with the organization.”

So far this semester, Operation T has gained the most notoriety from word-of-mouth around campus, but Fernandez credits multimedia, especially Facebook and Twitter, with promoting the organization to people off campus. Fernandez said she makes sure to acknowledge all of her volunteers as well because she knows how generous they are with their time.

“Facebook is huge,” Fernandez said. “Right now we have over 400 likes, and I like to tag people in posts on the Facebook page who help me out.”

The Marketing Office at St. Edward’s has also lent a helping hand to Fernandez’s efforts to promote her program.

“Marketing has been very supportive of the organization,” Fernandez said. “They were the ones who put the organization on the St. Edward’s blog.”

Someday Fernandez hopes that Operation T could turn into a non-profit organization, but for now she is just focused on collecting as many shirts as she can.

“I just want to show people that you don’t need to be a millionaire to help other people out,” Fernandez said. “In the future when I leave St. Edward’s, I would love for this program to still be going on.”