I was excited when a last-minute opening in our Delivering Christmas calendar allowed me the opportunity to head to Stanford Gibson Primary School on Wednesday to assist with the Holiday Clothing Drive. I’d written about the program, which is a joint cooperation between The Place and the Norwich City School District, before. But this was my first time pitching in.
The goal of the Holiday Clothing Drive is to provide a new outfit (pants and shirt) to children in need during the Holiday season. It was initially started by the school system on a small scale in the 1980s. As need in the community has grown, the program has grown. The Place first became involved by providing volunteers. Last year, the non-profit’s role expanded and it now handles administration of the program.
Requests for clothing are funneled through the school district’s social workers, Kelly Collins-Colosi and Sarah Hordge. As of Wednesday, some 203 families had signed up, which translated to more than 500 kids in need.
How do they fill all those requests? Well, that’s where the community comes in. Giving trees decorated with ornaments indicating specific clothing items were placed at Wal Mart and each of Norwich’s school buildings. Helpful shoppers take that as their cue, grabbing tags off the trees and purchasing the appropriate articles of clothing. Others choose to donate cash instead, which volunteers then use to purchase the other items they need.
According to Kelly, the program relies heavily on these donations. This year, approximately $3,000 was raised between the myriad of private and corporate donations, including generous gifts from the Robert Smith Foundation and Wal Mart. But they were still short of what they needed to fill all of their requests, until the Emmanuel Episcopal Church came through for them in the eleventh hour with a $2,000 check.
As it so happens, Jim Everard was delivering the check when I arrived on Wednesday. It made me feel kind of giddy actually, because I could see how thrilled Kelly and the others were to see the gap closed. There were probably visions of pint-sized and junior clothing dancing in their heads.
It didn’t take long for Kelly and Sarah to put me to work alongside the other volunteers, which included several Unison employees and representatives from The Place.
I was momentarily distracted by the piles of neatly folded clothes, which had been carefully arranged on the classrooms long tables according to size and gender. But Kelly pointed past them to the heaping mound of black bags which occupied almost a quarter of the room’s floor space. These were the requests which had already been filled.
Each of the bags had a green paper stapled to it, and she gestured to it as she explained my task. I would be doing a bit of quality control, checking the contents of the bag against the request to make sure the appropriate sizes and styles had been selected.
I felt a frisson of angst as she added, as kind of an aside, that I had to make sure they matched, too. As those who know me can surely attest, that isn’t really my forte.
It wasn’t long, though, before I was really enjoying it. There were some really cute, fashionable clothes. And it was easy to imagine the children’s excitement not only when opened their gifts on Christmas morning, but also when they wore their new clothes to school for the first time.
The true significance of what we were doing really hit home when I read some of the notes parents had included on the form, about how times were tight and the items – including hats, gloves and coats – were genuinely needed and truly appreciated. It won’t come as any surprise, I’m sure, when I say I got choked up on more than one occasion. Particularly when I learned that the coat requests were being filled thanks to the employees at Chenango County’s Family Court. And that a number of hats and gloves had been knitted and crocheted specifically for the drive by a local church.
The hour I had pledged to help quickly turned into two, and I would have willingly stayed longer if Sarah and Kelly hadn’t been ready to call in a day. Before I left, I made them promise they’d call me earlier next year, so I could go shopping with them. They readily agreed, but with a caveat. I’d have to keep my Santa’s helper garb on for the duration. So, if next December you happen to see an Evening Sun reporter skipping around Wal Mart in one of our signature Delivering Christmas aprons and a Santa’s hat, try not to point and laugh. It is, after all, for a good cause.
According to Kelly, a group of student leaders from Norwich High School has volunteered to help transport the filled requests from Gibson to the community room at Morrisville State College’s Norwich Branch campus. Families will collect the clothing they requested from that location from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Tuesday.
For more information on the Holiday Clothing Drive or to make a donation, contact The Place at 336-9696. To contact a social worker associated with the program, contact the Norwich City School District at 334-1600.