MANSFIELD, Ohio – Heading into the cold weather season, the Mansfield Noon Optimist Club is making sure local children are warm this winter with their sixth annual “Coats for Kids” donation drive held Nov. 11.
Hosted at the Holiday Inn on Park Avenue West, the club collected new and gently used outerwear for both kids and adults, as well as hats, gloves, scarves, sweatshirts, and blankets. Thomas Conn, chairman of the Mansfield Noon Optimist Club, said the club’s goal was to collect 125 coats this year.
“With the participation of our club members, they always bring in one or two themselves, and if the public brings in some we hit our 125 mark pretty easily,” said Conn. “The winters in Mansfield are pretty harsh sometimes, and if you don’t have a coat to put on it’s not good.”
All warm items collected at the drive on Nov. 11 will be taken to Grace Episcopal Church where they will be counted, sorted, and distributed to those in need. Conn said the idea for “Coats for Kids” came from a Noon Optimist who was a member at Grace Episcopal.
“He saw a need one year to distribute coats to the membership of that church, so he asked the club if we’d get involved and we all thought that was a good idea,” said Conn.
The “Coats for Kids” drive is one of many efforts of the Noon Optimist Club to reach out to children in the Richland County community. Conn said the club donated more than $17,000 to youth organizations in the past year.
“Our motto is ‘friends of youth,’ and throughout the year we donate either our financial support or our manpower to worthwhile youth activities throughout the county,” said Conn, including hosting the home show at the Richland County Fairgrounds in the spring and providing a scholarship to the second runner-up in the Miss Ohio competition.
The Mansfield Noon Optimist Club is in its 93rd year of existence, having first formed in 1923. Conn himself has been a member since 1986.
“We’ve got a good bunch of people that do things because they think it’s the right thing to do,” he said. “I’m proud to be a member.”
