It was last January that 5-year-old Caizer Cayard noticed that one of his friends kept coming to preschool without socks on.
Cayard, then a preschooler at Child, Inc. on Draper Ave., brought it …
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It was last January that 5-year-old Caizer Cayard noticed that one of his friends kept coming to preschool without socks on.
Cayard, then a preschooler at Child, Inc. on Draper Ave., brought it to the attention of his parents, Darren and Claribel Cayard. After talking about it, the Cayards decided that they would make sure that not only Caizer’s friend but as many people as possible would get the clothes they needed.
“I questioned him a bit about it, like, does she not like socks? Is it because her feet get hot? And he just said, ‘No, she doesn’t have any socks,’” Claribel said. “Then, he asked ‘Could we buy her some socks?’”
“From there, it kind of snowballed into, well, how can we make this a little bit bigger?” Darren said. “My wife and I are very big on trying to help the community and parents in need, families in need, because we are one of those families in need, and so we thought why don’t we collect some donations?”
Those donations, Darren said, would become a “clothing closet” at Child, Inc., whose website describes it as a nonprofit agency that provides “comprehensive child development and family support services for low- to moderate-income families in Kent County.” Darren also joined Child, Inc.’s policy council, where he brought up the idea of the closet. It was approved quickly.
Amanda Gravelin, a manager at Child, Inc., took charge of setting up the closet. Instead of using an actual closet, though, Gravelin suggested repurposing a bus sitting unused in the agency’s parking lot.
“We were talking about these mini school buses that we’ve had sitting around here not doing anything,” Gravelin said. “We were trying to scrap them, get rid of them, we weren’t really sure what to do. So we considered remodeling that, and I came up with a small proposal and a budget on how much it would cost. I brought it to a meeting, and everyone liked that idea.”
After taking out the seats, putting in new flooring and shelves and washing the outside of the bus, the clothing closet officially opened on Dec. 5.
As the closet started, Child, Inc. received donations of shirts, sweaters and blankets from Project Undercover, a Warwick-based community organization that provides necessities to children in poverty, in addition to donations from families. The Cayards themselves also brought a few bags of clothes to donate, though those are sitting in storage for now, as Child, Inc. has received more clothes than the bus can fit.
Currently, the closet is open only to members of Child, Inc., although Gravelin said that they were considering opening it to the public. Members can make appointments to pick up clothes from the bus on Thursdays.
Gravelin plans to paint and decorate the outside of the bus in the spring. If the closet is a success, Gravelin said, Child, Inc. will create clothing closets at their other locations on the west side of the city and in Coventry.
“It really depends on how many families access it,” Gravelin said. “We would also have to have enough donations, whether it’s monetary and we are purchasing it, or donations from families, that we’re able to sustain it. It’s a cycle, and my goal is to make sure that it’s sustained. I just want to make sure that we have enough clothes for [families] to access and to continue doing so over the years.”
For the Cayards, showing their son how his ideas can have a positive impact on the community has made the project extra meaningful for them.
“If we can know that there’s no child in need, as far as not being able to come to school because they don’t have a coat or shoes or what have you, or that family feels embarrassed by not having those things, if we can alleviate that, that would be huge,” Claribel said.
“We’ve let him know that this is from his idea,” Darren said. “That he was so selfless and wanted to do something, because he saw that there was a need for that, and now we’ve reached out to our community and now we have this really big thing that is helping a lot more people in need.”
Anyone looking to donate can do so by dropping off clothing at any of Child, Inc.’s locations. The items most in need, according to Gravelin, are clothes for babies and toddlers, underwear and hats, coats and gloves for the winter.
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