“We know that there are at least a hundred thousand kids in Franklin County who are living 200% or below the federal poverty level. We need those kids to succeed for the future of our community in Central Ohio. Right now, clothing insecurity is a huge issue for a lot of those kids, but we’re only able to serve about 18,000 of them. We’re the only game in town, and the remaining 80% go unserved. 

The big challenge I see for us as a community is making sure that we’re recognizing clothing as part of the equation for families to succeed. Kids need to have socks. They need to have pants and shirts that fit them so that they can go to school feeling confident and ready to learn. But this is becoming harder for parents because more and more schools are moving to uniforms and those items tend to be even more expensive. 

We have a lot of stereotypes about families in poverty, and I’m going to tell you, they’re all kind of wrong. Most of the families we serve are working parents. You’ll see parents pull up in scrubs. You’ll see parents who are dressed to go work at your bank as your bank teller. So we are really serving working parents and easing the financial burden of clothing. 

There are so many pieces and parts to helping children achieve literacy outcomes, math outcomes, and graduation. We need them to achieve those outcomes for our future. And clothing is a part of that whether we think about it or not.” 

Subha Lembach is the Executive Director of Charity Newsies, Providing school clothing to students in Franklin County since 1907.