Streets Alive can’t keep up with laundry
MISSION HOPING TO BUY A SECOND WASHER, DRYER TO KEEP PEOPLE IN CLEAN CLOTHES
To wash and dry a few loads of laundry can be tedious work. But how about trying to clean hundreds of clothing items, about two dozen loads each and every day?
Streets Alive Mission has been trying to keep up with the demand with only one small washer and dryer. But with rising usage rates of the People In Need (PIN) clothing bank, it’s becoming increasingly difficult.
It’s something Krista Calderwood has witnessed firsthand. She helped organize a winter clothing drive at her work along with another lawyer, James Rouleau. When they dropped off the clothing, they saw that Streets Alive desperately needed more capacity for washing and drying. Since then, Calderwood’s been a regular volunteer and has set up a fundraising page on the Canada Helps website, which is a crowdfunding site for charities.
“Through our desire to help people have warm clothing, we put a call in and so many people responded. We’ve seen a great amount of people in the community band together to bring them donations,” said Calderwood. “And when we got there, they clearly needed more help. They need more laundering capacity so they can keep providing service to people.”
Since the fundraiser launched last week, they’ve raised just over $600 of their $5,000 goal. They hope to raise enough by the end of January.
“We’re really overwhelmed by the outpouring of generosity from the community,” said Calderwood.
Laundering clothing inhouse keeps their stock levels up. When someone needs a change of clothes, they come into the PIN bank, choose a clean outfit, change and leave the old clothes behind. Those clothes are then washed, dried and placed back on the racks for someone else.
Streets Alive Mission serves more than 125 people per day, on average, through their programs which include the PIN Bank, a nightly meal program, a trusteeship program that teaches clients how to handle their money, and both men’s and women’s transitional housing.
They provide 1,000 full sets of clothes per month, and serve a meal to 75-100 people in need every day, all through generous community donations and committed volunteers.
“Right now we have a small laundry — basically one machine trying to do multiple jobs all day long, and we’re unable to keep up with the demand to get the clothing out fast enough for the people in need,” said Tom Weppler, Streets Alive’s manager of client services.
Sometimes they have to send the clothes out for drycleaning services in order to keep up with demand. It’s not uncommon for a monthly drycleaning bill to exceed $1,000, said Weppler. That’s money going out the door that the non-profit wishes it could allocate elsewhere.
“As a non-profit we try to be quite frugal with our spending. We do have a budget and we try to maintain that budget. So when demands for outside services, for instance having our clothes laundered, that’s another expense for the month that we hadn’t considered,” said Weppler.
Renovations to the basement to create an area to efficiently launder the clothes will also be needed. Weppler figures they will need at least two washers and two dryers.
“They’ve got space but they’ve got to work with it and that’s all got a cost with it,” said Calderwood, adding the PIN Bank has ongoing needs for supplies and even rolling laundry bins. “They also desperately need teams of people to do organization for their PIN Bank, that’s another thing.”
Streets Alive has seen an increase in usage for all of their services over the past year. While the organization is getting the volunteers, the donations and the clients, “we’re not quite getting the laundering services,” said Weppler. That’s something Calderwood and Rouleau hope to change.
“They serve a great purpose in the community,” said Calderwood. “Our objective behind this was basically ... these might be people you see every day and you would never know who uses this, just like the food bank. So it’s something that really helps and no one would really know.”
To contribute, visit
www.CanadaHelps.org, search for Streets Alive and choose “New Washer and Dryer” to apply it to that fund, or go to the page at https://www.canadahelps.org/en/p ages/id/74244/. All donors are eligible to receive a charitable donation tax receipt. Follow @MelissaVHerald on Twitter