Borrowed from Asian American Leadership Development Empowerment and Development for Youth and Families (AALEAD) blog with permission:
AALEAD Attends Gifts for the Homeless Clothing Drive
Monday, December 09, 2013
By Melor Suhaimi, AALEAD Staff Photos Courtesy of AALEAD Staff
This past Saturday, MD AALEAD youth attended the annual Gifts for the Homeless clothing drive. Gifts for the Homeless is a local non-profit organization “that serves the homeless of the Washington, DC area.” (www.gfth.org) And every year, Gifts for the Homeless holds a clothing drive where the clothes get sorted and folded for homeless shelters. Volunteers from all over the area attend – including our AALEAD youth.
Our MD AALEAD youth spent three hours going through bags of donated clothing and sorting them into groups such as men and women business wear, toddler clothing, to bags and accessories. There were hundreds of bags of clothes once everything was folded and sorted. Later that day, Gifts for the Homeless transported the bags to local homeless shelters. By the end of the day, AALEAD youth learned the importance of giving back as we try to express with our youth with all of our community service events. A few students who attended our last community service event at DC Central Kitchen saw first-hand the homeless community in DC. And with that in mind, a few students mentioned the need of warm clothing for the homeless people they met sitting outside of DC Central Kitchen. It was another great community service event and a learning experience for our AALEAD youth!
