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Helping Others Keep Warm
Written By: Duncan Greenlee, Mountaintop Rotary Club | Issue: Winter 2024
The Community Coat and Winter Clothing Drive is literally a lifesaver during this exceptionally frigid season.
The Community Coat and Winter Clothing Drive is now under way.
We are asking you to clean out your closet and donate your gently used winter overcoats to the Community Coat Drive. We need winter overcoats for both adults and children, gloves, hats, scarves, anything that will help keep your neighbors warm this winter.
Place your donated clothing in the big silver coat boxes located around town. You can also make a monetary donation, which will be used to buy new and used winter clothing for adults and children. Place your donation in the clear plastic cash boxes located next to the coat boxes in area churches. Checks should be made out to the Mountain Top Rotary Club.
The feeling that you get from helping your neighbor stay warm this winter, the feeling you get from seeing your old coat on one of your neighbor’s backs, those feelings are like chicken soup for the soul.
The coat boxes are in these locations around Highlands:
Community Bible Church, First Presbyterian Church, United Methodist Church, First Baptist Church, Our Lady of the Mountains Catholic Church, Episcopal Church of the Incarnation, Don Leon’s Restaurant – where you get 10 percent off of your meal for any donation of winter clothing, First Bank, Highlands Recreation Park, and The Performing Arts Center.
Late summer of 2023, we decided to make five important changes: 1. We renamed the Coat Drive the Community Coat Drive to broaden our base of support, and to reflect the actual reality that coats were coming from many different sources, not just Mountain Top Rotary. 2. We decided to put out more boxes to get more coats. 3.Berry Howard, Jim Spencer, and Cath Connolly, decorated the boxes to make them much more appealing. 4. We decided not to set a numerical goal for the Coat Drive this year, but instead to adopt the more powerful goal of, “Enough.” 5. Mountain Top Rotary put $2,000, which was matched by $2,000 from Rotary District 7670, and another $1,000 from a private foundation.
Why a Coat Drive?
First, there is a need. When it comes time to go out and play for recess, the kids who don’t have a warm coat to wear have to stay inside. Men and women who work outside suffer greatly if they don’t have warm enough clothes.
Secondly, Coat drives are economically and practically efficient. We are asking our friends and neighbors to give away a garment that they no longer want or need in order to help someone who really needs that garment.
