Thank you!
This term we delivered over 100 bags of donated clothes to one of our chosen charity for 2020/2021 TAWS #highclare
Wear and Share
The project is part of The Active Wellbeing Society’s (TAWS) Sharing Communities area of work, which originally began with Share Shacks. During the height of lockdown, TAWS became a hub for emergency food distribution across Birmingham, and amongst the food requests there were numerous requests for clothing. TAWS started to accept donations of clothing to meet this need, and so the ‘Wear and Share’ project was born. Individuals, families and other charities and organisations in Birmingham and Solihull can request excellent quality, free clothing from Wear and Share that has been donated by kind hearted individuals and businesses. Since the project started back in June, the requests have only increased and the longer term need for the project has become even more apparent.
Who Wear and Share is for
The project started as a response to the levels of need in the city which were exasperated during lockdown. There is an environmental side to the project which also aims to reduce waste, promote reusing, recycling and repairing. So far, thousands of kilos of clothing has been saved from going to waste through the project. Typically, the people requesting clothing from us are either in long term poverty and the clothing they have is simply worn out or no longer fits and they cannot afford to replace it, or they are in crisis. Individuals we work with may be going through situations such as fleeing a domestic violence relationship, having been recently housed after homelessness, or leaving a hospital stay with very little. On more than one occasion, families have come to us who were victims of arson attacks and had lost everything they owned to a fire. Everyone we encounter is extremely vulnerable, and are struggling to get even their most basic needs met.
How the project encourages people to become active
Some of the people we work with do not have a support network to call on due to being far away from their social connections or simply not having family and friends to call on. This can make poverty and isolation levels worse, and put more barriers in place of someone becoming physically and socially active and connected to their community. With Wear and Share, we encourage people to engage with other areas of our organisation and our partners, in order to connect with wider support networks. By engaging with others in their community who can support them and building their confidence through additional support offered, this encourages them to ultimately participate in wider services that will benefit their overall wellbeing, such as physical activity sessions.
We absolutely could not do any of this without the wonderful donations made from people like you. We want to thank you so much for the wonderful donation Highclare School has made to us, and we hope to continue working with you in future.
Many thanks,
Caroline Owen
