New digs for Elgin Junior Service Board clothes site

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Clothes racks stand at the Elgin Junior Service Board clothing center, located in the Association for Individual Development building in Elgin. It serves those who can't afford clothing or suffer a loss such as from a fire or flood. | Michael Smart~Sun-Ti

Updated: November 5, 2011 1:10PM

ELGIN — Since 1970, the Elgin Junior Service Board has helped families in need through its Clothing Distribution Center by providing garments at no cost.

The service board developed the clothing center back then “because kids and women who couldn’t afford it needed clothes,” said Elizabeth McCoy, current chairwoman of the board’s Clothing Distribution Center. While it has moved over the years, until recently it was in the basement of a downtown Elgin bank. But that building kept getting water in the basement, and it wasn’t an ideal location for the service.

That’s where Kathy Greenwood came in. As the vice president for marketing and development for the Association for Individual Development, and an associate JSB member, Greenwood heard the service board was looking for a new location for its clothing center.

AID’s job training center in Elgin opened four years ago to provide vocational training and work opportunities for its clients. However, Greenwood said, the small assembly work they’d hope to offer clients there has never fully materialized because those jobs have been outsourced to other countries.

That warehouse space, however, was perfect for the JSB’s clothing center, Greenwood said.

AID’s goals are very similar to JSB’s and the other community and social aid groups the two work with, McCoy said: helping people become more independent and financially stable. Many of their clients or their clients’ families can and have used the clothing center services in the past, Greenwood said.

That is one of the reason that, as part of the move, the hours and mission of the clothing center also have changed, McCoy said. Instead of being open each Monday, the center will be open the first Monday and Saturday of each month. Those who come there for clothes must now be referred by another agency or program.

“We got a little more restrictive: less enabling, more empowering,” McCoy said.

Emergency help

The center still will be available for those who need day-to-day clothing help, as well as those who need clothing as a result of losses from events such as fires, floods or family emergencies, McCoy said.

In addition, organizers are working to build up a career-clothes inventory, helping those rejoining the work force who need appropriate clothes — khaki pants and collared shirts, dress pants, skirts, dresses and suits — for getting into the working world, McCoy said.

They also want to ensure that with new guidelines, everyone who needs help can get it, organizers said.

“We would like to serve more unduplicated families, so we can get more of the community involved who need help,” Greenwood said.

“The clothing center is for children and families in need, meaning they can’t afford it,” McCoy said. “That was the original design. Our (clothing center) is completely free. Now, whenever we hear of emergencies, even if the family is possibly financially capable but if they had a fire or a flood … contact us and give us genders, sizes, and we will pull what we can immediately.”

McCoy’s family has been involved with the clothing center almost since the beginning. She remembers when the center was in a garage off a back alley in downtown Elgin.

“The clothing center has been around since I was his age,” said McCoy, her young son on her lap. “I would ride my Big Wheel around” while her mother helped to sort clothes at one of the previous locations.

“This is the nicest location we have had,” she said.

Gently-worn, clean or new children’s, men’s or women’s clothing can be donated to the center from 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Monday through Thursday at the AID Training Center, 1135 Bowes Road. More information on the clothing center is at www.elginjsb.org.