PITTSFIELD — Members of the Lenox Memorial High School girls basketball team were working hard moving mountains of clothes and organizing them by size on Saturday morning.
Outside, it was raining, but inside, the teens helped people in need as part of a service project in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
They’re finding it's also personally fulfilling.
“It’s good for team bonding while helping the community,” said Kelsey Kirchner, 16, who was folding baby clothes with Chloe Parsenios, 16, and Grace Julieano, 15.
After helping coach youth basketball earlier, they came to the Gladys Allen Brigham Community Center gym in preparation for Monday’s MLK Day clothing drive sponsored by the center and Berkshire United Way.
The one-day clothing market will offer free, gently used clothing in all sizes from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
The Lenox team members are working on the project through Heather McNeice’s “Strategies for Success” class at Lenox High. Her ninth graders have to do one service project per semester.
McNeice is there, also, folding baby clothes, and reminded of “how little my kids used to be.”
Everyone there is reminded just how quickly children outgrow their clothes, and how hard it is for many Berkshire County families to afford them.
“It’s so needed,” said Brianna Lamke, a parent of a former student of McNeice’s who said she sees so many residents struggling.
Lamke, who was also organizing clothes, helped McNeice find the project for her current students, and said she believes teenagers, in particular, benefit from volunteer work. McNeice, she said, does a great job of instilling the value of service in her students.
“It’s so needed to create the compassion that so many teens seem to lack,” Lamke said.
She also said that the clothing drive, which began as something modest, grew into something that is going to help a significant number of families.
Other volunteers over the weekend and through Monday will include Pittsfield and Taconic High School students and staff from the Temescal Wellness cannabis shop. Greylock Federal Credit Union is also sponsoring the endeavor, said United Way President and CEO Tom Bernard, and Pittsfield-based Blue Q has donated bags for shoppers.
Abigail Allard, the development and communications director at Brigham, said having teen girls come to do this service work is exactly what the center — established in 1911 — is all about. “It gives them the opportunity to skill-build and help them get back to their community,” Allard said. “We find that, when you give them the opportunity to be leaders in the community, they come back to that community.”
The drive highlighted the generosity of the county's residents, which Lenox students Evelyn Julieano, 13, and Katie Shove, 14, experienced first hand as they were constantly pushing incoming bags of clothes onto gym carts.
“It just keeps us moving on our day off,” said Evelyn Julieano, “and we just know it helps everybody out.”
Heather Bellow can be reached at hbellow@berkshireeagle.com or 413-329-6871.