Julie Langdon has been running the project for eight years through St Mary's Parish in Echuca alongside Soup for Soul program.
“We provide homemade soup, and Aldi and Moama Bakery have donated groceries and bread for people,” Ms Langdon said.
“[Thursday] would have been the last day, but we've extended the service another five weeks, until the end of July.”
This week, the program had support from two Year 5 students from Moama Anglican Grammar, who gathered 224 kg of clothing from the school community for donation.
Annabel Pickles and Neisha Davidson, both aged 10, were keen to highlight the issue of clothing waste in landfill as part of the school's Creation Care assignment, collecting both children's and adults’ clothing.
“We've had families asking for children's clothing and not had anything before,” volunteer Valmai Miller said. "This is the biggest amount of children's clothing we've seen.”
The students put together the event with only a week's notice, wanting to make the event as big as possible.
“We wanted to do something to help our community and our environment,” Annabel said. "About two weeks ago we had the idea to make it bigger to help more of the community.”
“We wanted to help people who don't have clothes at all,” Neisha said.
The students asked their school community to bring clothing that was "still in good nick" but they could no longer use themselves and that otherwise might have ended up in landfill.
“We had to remind kids to ask their parents before they took their clothes,” Annabel said.
The Coat and Blanket Drive is open at St Mary's Parish every Thursday throughout July from 10 am to 2 pm, with the Soup for Soul project starting at noon.
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