A big red bus pulled into big orange country Wednesday and grabbed some attention.
It was all part of the Red Bus Project, an effort to help raise money for Show Hope, an organization that offers financial help to families adopting orphans.
"We saw the importance of setting up something here that would stand out, something that would be unique," said Chris Wheeler, Show Hope's director of student initiatives. "There are over 140 million orphans in the world today, and we feel like, in order to advocate for them, we need to get people's attention, and we need to be able to say, 'stop, look this way.'"
The double-decker bus parked right in front of Neyland Stadium on the Knoxville campus of the University of Tennessee Wednesday.
The bus has been outfitted as a mobile thrift shop.
"We figured, college students don't have a lot of money to give toward orphan care, but we thought maybe they would be interested in thrift store shopping," Wheeler said. "So rather than donate toward an orphan, we thought, let's let them buy clothes, and the money could go towards orphan care."
A steady stream of students made their way into, up and around the bus, checking out the donated items, which included some Tennessee Traditions apparel.
"The broke college student's kinda like the joke about all of us, which, you can find some really cool things at thrift shops, so it presents a cool opportunity for us to get to look around and help out at the same time," said Dara Smith, a freshman who admits she saw the red bus and later searched the Internet for more on the cause before returning to shop.
Other students returned to their dorm rooms to gather clothes to donate. It's all part of the ongoing effort for the project on its 25-campus tour.
Leading the way is Caleb Chapman, the son of Christian music artist Steven Curtis Chapman and his wife, Mary Beth, who founded Show Hope.
"I feel like I have such a burden and have such a heavy heart for this and passion about it, and I know that other people that might just not be as informed as me would have the same heart, they just need the information," said Caleb Chapman, who also is performing with his band, 'Caleb,' at each stop.
"To be able to combine the two things I love most in this world -- orphan care and music -- has just been awesome," he said.
There is no set financial goal for the Red Bus Project, according to organizers. Instead, they'll look to something a bit more intangible.
"At the end, we're measuring our success by the number of students that we engage, the numbers of college students that wake up for the first time and say, I want to make a difference, I want to speak up for an orphan, I want to do something," Wheeler said.
The tour is set to stop at Carson-Newman College on Thursday and finish up the journey at UT-Chattanooga on April 16.