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13th annual Scouts drive provides food, clothing, bicycles
Kimberly Braun knows just how crucial it is for someone experiencing homelessness to have access to warm winter clothes.
Braun is the executive director of Homeless Outreach Providing Encouragement, a Longmont nonprofit group that provides a year-round overnight shelter and support to people facing homelessness. As temperatures plummet, having the right clothing can save someone’s life, she said.
“We are always in kind of the zero zone when it comes to winter clothes, especially long underwear and hand warmers,” Braun said.
Scott Conlin, an assistant scoutmaster with Longmont’s Troop 64, heard how much the nonprofit needed clothing. To help, Conlin added HOPE to the beneficiaries of this year’s Turkey Turnout, an annual donations drive.
Just after 9:30 a.m. Saturday, donations started arriving by the carload. Volunteers were stationed in the 400 East parking lot on Kimbark Street, behind The Great Frame Up. They bustled throughout the day, unloading the cars and sorting boxes, bags and trailerloads full of bicycles.
Conlin and his family have helped run the food drive for the past 13 years. This year, the family continued the tradition and saw the largest number of participating volunteer groups to date. There were over 150 volunteers from Scouts BSA troops 64, 65, 66, 73 and 548, Girl Scouts troops 77029, 77904, 77914 and 77915, and Cub Scout Pack 673 and the Church of Jesus Christ Latterday Saints-ward Stake in Longmont. Last year, eight groups participated in the food drive.
“It’s just a great way of going into Thanksgiving,” Conlin said.
The goal this year was to collect 12,000 pounds of food for the OUR Center, a nonprofit that provides critical services, including food and utilities to people in need; and more than 100 bikes for Bicycle Longmont’s Kids Holiday Bike Program, for which the nonprofit collects and repairs bicycles to give to children. New this year, the drive also collected winter clothing and toiletries to support HOPE.
“I think we have a formula now that makes it easy,” Conlin said. “There are more volunteers. I feel like I’m doing less, but reaching more people.”
The drive involves distributing more than 7,000 bags to homes across Longmont. People fill up the bags with food, and the volunteers return to collect them. People could also leave out clothing or bicycles for collection. Residents were also welcome to swing by and drop off donations in the parking lot, too.
Volunteers helped pick up donations, as well as sort them and load them onto three U-haul trailers. Conlin said he expected to donate at least four trailerloads of donations. To date, Conlin said, the program has collected 53,000 pounds of food, 15,000 pounds of clothes and 419 bicycles.
Eleven-year-old Andrew Birrer heaved a box of canned goods from a van Saturday. Andrew, of Mead, joined Troop 548 this year and this marked his first time participating in the drive.
“I definitely like the excitement of filling the van straight to the brim,” he said.
Gloria Brown, from Troop 64, helped unload a trailer full of bicycles. Gloria, 16, from Longmont, said this was her third year volunteering for the Turkey Turnout.
“It’s cool seeing everyone come together to do a big project like this,” she said. “(I) just (like) seeing the results of all the bikes we collected and the massive amount of food.”
Kris Kooiman is coordinator of the kids bike giveaway at Bicycle Longmont.
He said roughly a quarter or third of all the bikes for the program come from the annual drive.
“Just like with every year, once we get the bikes, we have volunteers that fix them up and return them back into the community,” Kooiman said. “It’s a nice meld with what we’re doing and the Scouts are doing and a lot of other businesses in Longmont are doing.”
People can donate a bike for the program throughout the winter. Bikes can be dropped off at any Longmont fire station.
Volunteers collected donations through noon Saturday and planned to be there until about 3 p.m. sorting the items. Conlin said he believes there are several things youth take away from participating in the Turkey Turnout.
“I think it’s a good connection for meeting neighbors,” Conlin said. “A lot of Scouts distribute bags around where they meet or go to school. I think the other thing too is just to realize there are a lot of people who are in need in the city. I think the third part is to note how generous everyone is in the city.”