Vision

Our vision is to offer our families the ability to leave clothing items that they no longer need, and take items that they have a use for. This includes winter clothing, Halloween costumes, graduation dresses and suits, as well as everyday outfits and shoes. This project will help our community, as well as help Canada as it keeps families from throwing clothing away that will end up in landfills.

Action

The students sent home a letter using our E Blast News to ask families to donate gently used clothing items to the school. Once we collected enough items students then washed them, folded them, and sorted them by size and type. This made it easier for families to scan and choose items that they would benefit from.

During the winter months we also sent home a E News Blast to our families advising them that we had partnered with an agency called “No Cold Kids” which donated several gently used winter items to us. Students then organized the items by size and type and we set up a “store” in our Conference Room. We communicated with families through E News and invited them to come into the school and take what they needed. We left the store up all winter and gave items out to students as they needed.

Our “Eco Team” supported all of these initiatives so far and are very actively engaged in the projects.

Reflection & Celebration

Although we hope to provide these services every year at Jersey, we can reflect on our winter clothing drive and store. Some challenges we faced were we received many jackets and snow pants for babies, and less sizes for intermediate students. We also found that we went through hats, mittens and scarves very quickly. Next year we are going to have a sign in/sign out bin for winter clothing for students who simply forgot their hats/mitts/scarves so that we don’t run out before the end of winter. The biggest success we noticed was that the winter clothing was used frequently and many families benefited from the program, thus keeping the items out of landfills, which was our ultimate goal.