Volunteers pack up thousands of new winter coats for BPS students

By adamg on Sat, 11/21/2015 - 10:02am

Packing up coats at BPS in the Bolling Building in Dudley Square

Katherine and Jasmine, Simmons students, work to package coats. Photo by Eastie Strong.

Volunteers at the Bolling Building in Dudley Square are busy today packaging 8,200 new winter coats for distribution next week to BPS students who need them.

Operation Warm bought the coats with donations from BNY Mellon, Genzyme Corporation, Vertex Pharmaceuticals, People’s United Community Foundation, the TD Charitable Foundation and a Boston-area philanthropist who wants to remain anonymous, according to BPS.

Last year, BPS distributed about 3,000 winter coats through its Homeless Education Resource Network.

That's a lot of coats (photo by Eastie Strong):

Neighborhoods:

Roxbury

Topics:

Parenting

Free tagging:

Boston Public Schools

Dudley Square

Bolling Building

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Comments

what a great idea!

By bibliotequetressnotloggedin... on Sat, 11/21/2015 - 10:21am.

Good for them!

Great Teamwork!

By eight of 8 on Sat, 11/21/2015 - 10:38am.

What a program--I'm impressed with the logic and coordination looping the nonprofit (operation warm); corporate donors;BPS; young community volunteers; and whomever else made this come off effectively and efficiently as it seems to have.

A warm coat, that a kid can keep, that no one ever used it before---good idea :)

And just because plenty of us grew up using hand-me-downs for just about everything doesn't mean that programs that gift brand new items to children that will benefit shouldn't exist (and the Grinch's heart grew three sizes that day...).

Here is another version of

By kvn on Sat, 11/21/2015 - 11:43am.

Here is another version of the coat thing,

Collecting Warm Winter Coats for Children & Adults
October 12th, 2015- January 8, 2016 warm winter coats will be accepted at all Anton’s Cleaners and Jordan’s Furniture locations

In these hard economic times there are thousands of individuals in our very own community that are without a warm winter coat. Donated coats will be cleaned free of charge by Anton’s Cleaners. Once collected and cleaned, coats will be distributed through the Coats for Kids Distribution Partners network, which includes organizations such as Massachusetts Community Action Programs (MASSCAP), Salvation Army, Middlesex Human Service Agency, BU Medical Center Outreach Van Project, Wish Project, Community Giving Tree, Mental Health Association of Greater Lowell, Strafford County Community Action, Catholic Charities, to name just a few.

http://antons.com/cfk/

Excellent idea

By anon on Sat, 11/21/2015 - 1:53pm.

I hope if any winter coats are leftover they will be distributed to homeless citizens who are forced to live in train stations and silver line bus stops this season to keep them from freezing to death.

Given the

By anon on Sat, 11/21/2015 - 10:17pm.

rate at which I've seen children lose coats, they'll be able to collect all of these coats from the lost and founds at various schools and distribute them again next year.

The schools probably have more pairs of gloves/mittens than they do children by spring.

Losing coats?

By Ron Newman on Sun, 11/22/2015 - 7:19am.

I can see losing hats, gloves, scarves, and mittens, but how do you lose a whole coat in the winter?

Younger kids

By KellyJMF on Mon, 11/23/2015 - 11:09am.

When it's cold in the morning but bright and sunny in the afternoon, elementary-aged kids will take off their jackets and forget where they did that. Or on an overheated bus.

I did a Girl Scout event with girls from K-2 to 8th grade one March and came home with two trash bags of assorted socks, shoes, snow pants, and coats, mostly from the Daisies in the group (K-2 and 1st grade).