A Salvation Army volunteer holds up a coat for a parents to check out before taking it home. (WTAQ/Casey Nelson)
DE PERE, WI (WTAQ) – The Salvation Army is distributing Coats for Kids in De Pere this weekend. But the process for parents to pick up the coats is a bit different in 2020.
Only parents are allowed in the old Shopko building on Broadway to pick out one new coat and other gently used coats this year.
“No children – that part makes us all a little bit sad,” said Salvation Army Director of Social Services Nan Pahl.
But with concerns of COVID-19 still in the air, precautions had to be taken. Parents are screened outside, then follow the arrows inside to a temperature station before being registered and paired with a volunteer.
Luckily, the size of the facility gave them a lot of room to work with.
“We have a lot more space so we can be safely spread out we have tape on the floor. All green tape lines are for the volunteers, six-feet away, the blue tape lines are for our parents…there are two lines at all times, based on the times that the parents are coming,” Pahl explained. “The parent can look at the rack and say ‘Oh! I like that pink one with the flowers on it,’ – a volunteer would pull it out on the hanger, turn it around so the parents could see it, that’s really the parents opportunity to say ‘Maybe we should go for a bigger size,’ or put it into the bag and keep going.”
A rack of coats in the former Shopko building in De Pere during the Salvation Army’s Coats for Kids distribution. (WTAQ/Casey Nelson)
The flow was all one-way traffic, winding through the racks – which were labeled boy or girl – and by size. Pahl says it works best if parents have a planned out order of sizes to avoid criss-crossing through the lines.
Each family gets one new coat – and then selects the rest from the gently-used racks. The number of families being served this year is about the same as years passed with about 1,100 families and 3,100 kids receiving coats. But despite the similar numbers, that demographic has shifted over recent months.
“We’ve seen more new families this year that were affected by COVID. Either lay offs or their job was discontinued all together,” Pahl told WTAQ News. “We’ve also seen a few families that used the program in the past, but chose to rather get a thrift store voucher because they feel a little more comfortable not coming to an event of this size.”
The Coats for Kids distribution runs through Saturday.
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