If you or your family members have some coats in the back of your closet that you never wear – and you know you do – time is running out to put them to good use through the local Give A Kid A Coat Campaign.
In that coat drive, A Cleaner World takes in, cleans, presses and conducts minor repairs on the coats and gets them to people who need them.
The 2023 program, which began on Friday, Jan. 6 this year, is ending Saturday Feb. 11. A Cleaner World works with local media, the Salvation Army and others to provide the coats to those who might otherwise have to endure the cold of winter unprotected.
From 1987 through 2022, the program has collected over 947,000 coats.
The number hasn’t been tallied for this year but every coat you get out and take to A Cleaner World by Feb. 11 will be put to use helping keep someone warm.
Those who want to help out in the 2023 Give A Kid A Coat campaign just need to to check their closets for outgrown coats or ones they no longer wear and drop the coats off at any A Cleaner World location. A Cleaner World fixes up the coats before they’re given to The Salvation Army for distribution.
If you don’t have a coat to give but would like to help out, you can make a monetary donation to the initiative and that money will be used to purchase coats in specially needed sizes.
Each year, a Cleaner World encourages groups such as schools, churches and businesses to hold collection events before to the campaign kickoff and drop them off in between Christmas and New Year’s so it can begin to clean them and have coats ready for distribution in early January. It’s too late for that this year, but local organizations can start planning for the end of 2023.
Why isn’t this campaign in September, October, November, and December? By the time they start and end this program each year, it’s Spring and most kids don’t need coats anymore. I don’t get the timing of the program.