THUNDER BAY -- Community Clothing Assistance members painted "Grow with us" on the May Street clothing centre this summer. They can paint anything they want on the walls for their tenth anniversary. They own it now.
Brian Scott, who has been a board member since the group's inception, will no longer also be its landlord. He donated the building because he feels the organization has reached a point of stability that it will be sustainable over the long term.
"As it grew, I started to develop a vision that perhaps a charity should have a building and now that the charity ahs grown to such a large size and does such a huge service for the community, I decided to give the building to the charity so it had more of a sense of permanence and people might give to the charity more readily," he said.
"Because they'll know the charity is going to be here for a very long time."
The non-profit group that began with a vision to sell a piece of clothing for a dollar has grown into its space over the last decade. Even with volunteer staff in the beginning, its core members realized it would need intermediary steps to achieve that goal.
Today, it receives 20,000 articles of clothing each month, half of which is donated to people who can't afford clothing. The rest is sold in a maturing and deceptively large storefront.
"Over the years, we've improved the appearance fo the building and radically improved the inside to make it more pleasnt for the shoppers," Scott said. "It's so much better."
Community Clothing Assistance grew in all directions and at times, has had to pull back when projects that naturally grow out of its mandate have over-extended its reach. It took a brief dip into selling furniture, for example, but drew back. Scott said the organization's flexibility as a not-for-profit organization is what allows it to help out a family traveling through Thunder Bay whose clothes were ruined in a car crash or community members who lost everything to fire or were living in a basement apartment during historic flooding events over recent years.
David Andrews is the group's president. He said Community Clothing Assistance currently has 90 community partners and that could increase to 200 over the next year or two.
"Brian was one of the founding members of the board," Andrews said.
"His original intention had been building and organization that was large enough that it would warrant the gift of the building and I think we finally achieved that."
