The Rotary Club of Pelham has a passion for helping underprivileged children in our community. Our Rotarians really answer the call when there are children in need. Recently, we became aware of the need for jackets for children in our community who didn’t have warm clothes to wear during the winter. Since many of our children have to walk to school in the morning and walk home in the afternoon, a warm jacket could really improve the life of a child who isn’t able to afford one.

While the need is great, the effort required to fill this need is not. Every family has jackets in the closet that children have grown out of or that are not being used anymore. Normally these jackets just sit in a closet or attic. At best, they just take up space in someone’s home and at worst, they are thrown away. With this project, we have found a way for Rotarians and other members of our community use something that they no longer need to help many unlucky children in our community.

Pelham Rotarians collect these jackets and then we have them cleaned. We then sort them by size so that they can be easily distributed to the children that need them. The jackets are presented to Pelham Elementary School so that they can identify children in need and deliver the jackets where they will do the most good. This is definitely a worthwhile project and one that we plan to continue in the future.