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Coat drive brings warmth to children, others in need

By Tom Vogt, Columbian Science, Military & History Reporter
Published: January 16, 2015, 4:00pm
3 Photos
Robin Anderson, from the Rotary Club of Greater Clark County, selects children's coats Friday at the Friends of the Carpenter center.
Robin Anderson, from the Rotary Club of Greater Clark County, selects children's coats Friday at the Friends of the Carpenter center. They will be distributed at Evergreen and Vancouver schools. Photo Gallery

Racks of jackets and stacks of coats were gathered up Friday for delivery to kids who can use some winter warmth.

A team from Rotary Club of Greater Clark County picked up the outerwear at Friends of the Carpenter, the middleman in an annual coat drive.

The coats and jackets will be distributed to children at Hazel Dell Elementary School, club member Robin Anderson said.

Hazel Dell is one of the lowest income areas in Clark County, Anderson said, and “We support a Lunch Buddies program at the school.”

The coats were collected on Jan. 3 by local Boy Scout troops, as part of their annual Christmas tree drive. A lot of people clean their closets after Christmas, creating space for clothing they received as gifts.

This is the fourth year Friends of the Carpenter has been part of the coat drive. The nonprofit organization’s Friendship Center, 1600 W. 20th St., has plenty of room for sorting the donated outerwear by size and condition.

It was a sizeable stack, although the work crew didn’t go through and count every coat and jacket. It was easier to count the supply of coat hangers they had ready.

“It took nine people a day and a half to put them on hangers, and they used almost 1,000 hangers,” said CJ Haney, activities coordinator at Friends of the Carpenter.

They can’t do a lot of mending or cleaning, so “gently used” clothing is what they’re looking for. When they forward apparel to other agencies, the Friends want it to be off-the-rack ready, Haney said.

Some coats don’t make the cut. The zippers didn’t work, or they were too tattered or dirty. The stack of unusables was given to a group that sells old clothing by the pound, Haney said.

A group typically will take 50 to 75 items for its clientele, said Tom Iberle, executive director of the faith-based homeless outreach ministry.

For members of the Rotary Club of Greater Clark County, Friday’s coat pickup fits right into an ongoing effort — the Collins Coats for Kids program. (It’s named in honor of former club president Jim Collins.) If Vancouver’s Hazel Dell Elementary doesn’t need all the coats, extras will go to students at Covington Middle School in the Evergreen Public Schools district.

Other shipments go to places that help the homeless. Open House Ministries took 102 coats for its downtown shelter.

“We have a donation room where we hang them up,” said Pat Neal, an Open House volunteer. Often, “when people have been on the streets, they ask for clothes.”

Organizing almost 1,000 old coats also means going through a lot — 2,000? 3,000? — of pockets.

Haney, the activities coordinator, said they had a running joke going for a while: Maybe someone would find a $100 bill in one of the coats.

Haney asked a guy if he’d come across anything. No, he was finding the same thing everybody else was finding: empty pockets.

“The next coat he went through had $20 in it,” she said.

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Columbian Science, Military & History Reporter