CLOTHES
TO KIDS:
Serving Denver
Families In Need
WWW.CLOTHESTOKIDSDENVER.ORG
W
hen Katie Jones
Jadwin came to
work for Clothes To
Kids of Denver as
the organization’s first employee
back in 2010, little did she know
that seven years later, she’d be
running the prestigious nonprofit,
overseeing hundreds of adult and
student volunteers and serving over
9,000 deserving kids a year. But today,
in a job that combines both her social
work background and deeply engrained
values of recycling and repurposing wherever possible, she is
positively thriving.
Supporting Jadwin from day one are the four female cofounders
of Clothes To Kids: Lesa Butler, a CPA; Gail Cerny, a past
president of the organization; Joyce Meyers, a past president and
former advertising executive; and Mary Overington, a senior
social worker and adoption liaison for Denver Human Services.
The inspiration for opening Clothes To Kids of Denver
came to Cerny while visiting a friend in the Tampa Bay area.
There, she witnessed her friend’s fiery passion for working at
the original Clothes To Kids, which opened back in 2002.
That store served a sizeable population of Pinellas County,
where a staggering 50 percent of schoolchildren qualified
for free and reduced lunches. When Cerny investigated the
need for such a program in Denver, she was dumbfounded.
The need for assistance, as measured through school
lunch allowances, was not the 50 percent experienced by
Tampa, but even greater—an astounding 70 percent! The
women quickly got to work emulating the Tampa concept
and were ready to open their doors shortly thereafter.
The concept of Clothes To Kids is unlike other clothing
donation programs, many of which are used primarily to
subsidize other worthwhile endeavors, such as helping disabled
adults, providing emergency assistance, and conducting job
training. Clothes To Kids, by contrast, is all about the kids
and their deep-seated social need to dress like the kids around
them—and to fit in. While these children are often assured
housing, food, and medical care by various government
agencies, clothing often falls to the bottom of the list—a
fact that doesn’t sit well with Jadwin and the organization’s
founders. “Kids from this population will sometimes be
so deprived of proper clothing that they will go to school
without socks or underwear in the middle of a frigid Denver
winter,” she says. “Our mission is to change that reality and
someday be able to clothe every deserving kid in Denver.”
To qualify for Denver’s program, kids are typically referred
by local social service agencies, schools, churches, clinics,
or hospitals. All that Clothes To Kids requests is a written
referral on agency letterhead, although foster kids and students
on free- and reduced-lunch programs qualify automatically.
“There are about 150 schools where the need is so great,” says
Jadwin, “that all the students are accepted on-the-spot.”
Despite its reputation as an artsy enclave and sports town,
Denver is truly a melting pot of over twenty-five different
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