The Winter Clothes Drive

During the fall months, some of our good friends at St. Innocent Orthodox Church, our home parish in Ohio, decided to help the people of the Soup Kitchen in yet another way.  They had heard from Pauline's updates that it gets very cold here in Albania in the winter and that there is not a lot of good indoor heating options, especially if you are poor.  They had heard about people having very poor warm clothing to protect them from the cold, or in some cases, none at all.  (See the picture on the right of the boy at the Soup Kitchen in the middle of winter with no shoes!)

The good people at St. Innocent came up with a good idea for attacking this problem by organizing and executing a Clothes Drive.  They donated and collected clothes in a variety of different ways.  The collected over 40 good sized boxes of warm, high quality clothes that weighed, altogether, over 750 lbs.

The next challenge was to get all of this clothing shipped to Albania without paying a fortune.  They found a small shipping company that worked with them for a reasonable price, and they were able to get the clothes over here and into the hands of people before the cold weather really hit.

The result has been many happy and much warmer people.  We had a special room that we used to take small groups inside so that they could look for what they needed without chaos and competition.  We also set aside some of the children's clothes and gave them away during or Children's Christmas Program.

Thank you St. Innocent for all your help with this project, especially Angela & John Skinner!