Where to donate clothes to charity?

lasher

Hi,

I did a major clearout of my wardrobe over the weekend and am wondering does anyone have any suggestions where to donate my old clothes?

I would like to donate them to somewhere like the Red Cross for use in disaster-hit areas (e.g. their collections after the Pakistan earthquakes a number of years ago) rather than giving them somewhere for re-sale.

Any ideas / suggestions please? Thanks.

Spear

Moved from N&F.

The Real B-man

Not many who actually donate the clothes directly, rather sell them for charity try Oxfam or Enable Ireland for a start.

dory

lasher wrote: »

Hi,

I did a major clearout of my wardrobe over the weekend and am wondering does anyone have any suggestions where to donate my old clothes?

I would like to donate them to somewhere like the Red Cross for use in disaster-hit areas (e.g. their collections after the Pakistan earthquakes a number of years ago) rather than giving them somewhere for re-sale.

Any ideas / suggestions please? Thanks.

Think of it this way; Ireland has a recession. Japanese decide to be kind and donate 10,000 Irish cars to Irish people. How many jobs would be lost in the Irish motor trade?

You can read about another instance of someone wanting to donate t-shirts here. It caused a bit of controversy. No country is poor because of a lack of t-shirts, and no aid agency would spend money sending t-shirts over when they could buy them locally cheaper than they could ship them.

Best thing to do would be to give them to a charity shop, let them be sold and then the money will go to a good cause.

TylerIE

dory wrote: »

Think of it this way; Ireland has a recession. Japanese decide to be kind and donate 10,000 Irish cars to Irish people. How many jobs would be lost in the Irish motor trade?

You can read about another instance of someone wanting to donate t-shirts here. It caused a bit of controversy. No country is poor because of a lack of t-shirts, and no aid agency would spend money sending t-shirts over when they could buy them locally cheaper than they could ship them.

Best thing to do would be to give them to a charity shop, let them be sold and then the money will go to a good cause.

I think thats a little unkind. Ive been involved with a small African charity for years and while bringing in clothing doesnt alleviate poverty it certainly improves quality of life for those there. We took over 1.5 tonnes of clothing (as checked & hand baggage on a plane) and it resulted in hundreds of orphans who used to wear maize sacks getting some reasonable clothing, which meant they were allowed to attend schools. However we took over other higher priority items first and just used leftover luggage space for clothing. We certainly didnt affect the local economy negatively - If anything we stimulated it as a lot of the parents sold some of the clothes on in order to purchase food. As is all clothes sold locally are imported from EU....



To the OP I suggest that you may consider selling them to one of the like Cash Converter shops in Ireland. They pay about 50c per kilo for the clothing. You can in turn donate this to a charity of your choice.

Alternatively some of the Presbyterian Churches in the Northern counties regularly send out large consignments, at reasonably low cost. For most charities it would cost more to send out clothes from Ireland than to buy them of the groups who import them from the US by the shipload.

If you are looking for an African registered charity that will actually use the money properly then I can happily recommend one very well.

dory

lst wrote: »

I think thats a little unkind. Ive been involved with a small African charity for years and while bringing in clothing doesnt alleviate poverty it certainly improves quality of life for those there. We took over 1.5 tonnes of clothing (as checked & hand baggage on a plane) and it resulted in hundreds of orphans who used to wear maize sacks getting some reasonable clothing, which meant they were allowed to attend schools. However we took over other higher priority items first and just used leftover luggage space for clothing. We certainly didnt affect the local economy negatively - If anything we stimulated it as a lot of the parents sold some of the clothes on in order to purchase food. As is all clothes sold locally are imported from EU....

I apologize for being unkind, what I said is based on research and basic economics. Many charities ignore these facts and keep going with their handing out left overs strategies, only they're not strategies they're short term solutions. I did this many times too during my first trips to India. But in the long run it doesn't help anyone. Anyway, no point debating.

TylerIE

dory wrote: »

I apologize for being unkind, what I said is based on research and basic economics. Many charities ignore these facts and keep going with their handing out left overs strategies, only they're not strategies they're short term solutions. I did this many times too during my first trips to India. But in the long run it doesn't help anyone. Anyway, no point debating.

lol sorry didnt want to seem to be debating!

Just be interested to hear other perspectives.

JaneHudson

The easiest thing seems to be drop them into your local Enable Ireland, Oxfam or Irish Cancer Society shop. I noticed some pink clothing recycling units at bottle banks, that goes to the Marie Keating foundation.

If you have a particular charity in mind you could always bring them to one of those 'cash for clothes' places and donate the 50c per kilo you get.

Duke Leonal Felmet

I also have clothes to donate, but I would rather help a local (the clothes/funds go to help Irish-based people) charity.

Any suggestions?

TylerIE

Last year Dublin Simon were collecting clothing.