March 27th 2022

I’ve often talked about the donations we receive from several different sources – this week I thought I’d tell you about the work we do to share some of the overage to help other organizations. The volume of clothing we receive far exceeds the number of people we serve and we’ve identified a few ways to ‘share the wealth’.

For the last two weeks, we have been gathering warm clothing, bedding and diapers for the Ukraine; to date, we have sent several carloads to the CLI and MOTO locations in Wilmington and Navassa. These donations were loaded into shipping containers and sent out from the port every weekend in March.

We also gather warm weather clothes for an organizations that collects clothing to be sent to Honduras; they came in a couple times this year to pick up our donations..

Occasionally, we receive formal clothing items that aren’t requested by our guests, such as tuxedos or wedding dresses ; we take these to local thrift shops that support other charities. (In turn, some of the thrift shops bring things they can’t use to us. We’ve received linens from the Bargain Box and the Assistance League sent us a load of tote bags on wheels that were great for our guests that walk home with the food they pick up.)

Our food pantry had an abundance of soup thanks to the donation from Immaculate Conception’s ‘Souper Bowl’ event. We also had an excess of canned vegetables. We were able to share some with Catholic Charities and with the food pantry at St James in Burgaw.

This past week we gave a crib, a toddler bed and a new living room table to the ‘2Share’ organization run by Don Arabian. This is the organization that is doing a great job of collecting furniture and delivering it to those in need. When we encounter a family in need, particularly of beds, we contact Don and he does his best to help them. We had one mom with four kids that had been homeless; they found a place to live and her request was for one bed they could all sleep in and get off the floor. Don delivered 5 beds as well as other furniture. (Contact Don at 703-220-0762 if you have furniture to donate. He especially needs clean mattress sets.)

It’s great to be networking with other organizations to work together to help those in need!

Special need of the week: Hangers with clips for our clothing department.