Dress for Success: Organization (or lack thereof)

      Paige, Jordan, and I arrived at Dress for Success on Tuesday, October 13th at about 2:30 pm. This volunteering session was largely uneventful, with few tasks having been carried to completion. After we arrived, we signed in and Analisa Wagoner (the organization director/volunteer coordinator) showed us areas around the office space in which organization or rearrangement was needed. All three of us were assigned various seemingly unimportant tasks; Jordan and I made new nametags (although I had made them before, they had apparently been lost in the hopeless abyss that is Dress for Success's paperwork) for all volunteers, and Paige was told to sort some of the haphazard clothing. After some time, Analisa stopped us midway and explained that this branch of the organization was running out of storage space and struggling to keep up with the immense amount of incoming donations. She proceeded to take us to Dress for Success's storage space, an area of similar size next door to the Dress for Success office space.
      After Analisa ushered us into the storage space, I paused and took a look around and was sincerely shocked at the amount of disarray. Clothes were strewn every which way and shopping bags littered the floor, to a point where Jordan, Paige, and I had to watch our every step to ensure we weren't knocking over any precariously perched items (I did end up knocking over a couple bags). Analisa then explained how to sort the clothes into three different categories based upon the style, type, and physical condition of the clothing: sale, donate, or keep. Those clothes that were in fine condition but not suitable to be worn as business professional or business casual clothing were to be sold at the organization's sale for spring clothes. Next, the clothes that were lacking in quality were to be donated to other groups that could cheaply sell or supply to economically disadvantaged people. Finally, clothes that were of superior quality and could be used as part of a business professional or business casual outfit were kept aside for Dress for Success, to help fulfill their purpose of outfitting economically disadvantaged women in appropriate business clothing.
      Though the task of separating the clothing into these three categories seems simple, it was an exceedingly daunting task. Analisa, however, seemed disproportionately optimistic, nearly optimistic enough to make up for my own apprehension about starting this task. In my opinion, her optimism was gravely misguided: we weren't even able to start sorting during the volunteer session on that day because it took her almost 45 minutes just to explain what needed to be done. In addition, she suggested taking before and after pictures to showcase where we had started and how much we accomplished in organizing the area. I honestly don't believe there will be a significant improvement in the condition of this storage space, but I posted some before pictures below anyway. If, by some miracle, we are able to transform this area or even produce significant changes, I may post after pictures at a later date.

      

Importance of Giving Back

I strongly believe that being a volunteer is essential in becoming a well-developed human being. Some high school administrations have taken this into account and made it mandatory. I know from experience, that everyone had to dedicate a minimum of 60 hours to community service in order to graduate from my high school. This was a simple task for me seeing as though I had over 60 hours by my sophomore year, however it really bothered me that helping others in our community was something that students had to be forced to do. It bothered me even more that some students put this task off to the last minute and ended up faking their hours.

I am from Westlake, Ohio, which is a suburb of Cleveland. Being so close to the city has broadened the scope of how I looked at how privileged my family and I were. Although we live merely 14 minutes away from the inner city of Cleveland, we truly live a completely different life. There was never a time where I had to go to sleep hungry or even be worried that there wouldn’t be any presents under the Christmas tree. I first realized how truly grateful I was when my family and I went downtown to see a performance of Wicked. There were children, alone, begging for spare change in order to get something to eat. I cried and got so scared because I thought that was going to happen to me and my siblings. My father explained to me the differences between us and them. Although I couldn’t control the fact that they got the short end of the stick, it didn’t seem fair to me.

With guidance from my mom, I started becoming very involved with the homeless and disadvantaged population of Cleveland. We would serve meals at soup kitchens, donate toys and winter clothing, and other various activities. I might have just been one little girl in charge of scooping mashed potatoes or giving a few pairs of knit gloves, but I believe I made a difference. I learned more about the world from the people I met than I ever will in any history class. I gained insights to what it was like to live in poverty. These experiences also inspired me to always go beyond what was required of me. I hope one day I will be able to start my own non-profit organization to impact the lives of those less fortunate than I am.

Saying No to Dress for Success

Today was my fourth visit to Dress for Success Lexington, and nothing has improved since my first visit. Paige, Nikki, and I arrived around 2:55 pm, five minutes prior to our scheduled meeting time. We rang the doorbell and waved through the glass windows at Analisa, the volunteer coordinator. As we were waiting for her to pause what she was doing to let us in, we noticed an unmistakable look of surprise come upon her face. She awkwardly greeted us with “Oh, I wasn’t sure if you all were going to come in today or not.” We have found this to be a typical response to our arrival at the boutique seeing as though the scheduled dates and times of our “volunteering” seems to escape Analisa’s mind.

As we entered, I immediately observed that Analisa was wearing a navy skirt, a black suit jacket, and a pair of black heels. This is definitely not something someone would do on purpose, but usually this wouldn’t be that big of a deal. Nonetheless, Dress for Success promotes appropriate and presentable business attire, and mixing navy and black is definitely not setting a good example for their clients. Also, Analisa and Sue, the other Dress for Success employee, have made multiple negative remarks regarding what their clients have worn when they would come for a mock interview. Sue told us a story of a woman who came in with a yellow stain on her shirt. She explained that the woman experienced difficulty in washing her clothing because it was a far walk to the laundromat and it was very expensive. Sue went on to make a mockery of the woman saying how stains on clothing is ridiculous and embarrassing. This made me extremely upset. The ladies Analisa and Sue work with come from low income and underprivileged areas; they are clients of Dress for Success because they cannot afford appropriate business attire. These clients are in difficult situations and they are trying their best. The employees who are supposed to be “changing their lives” should not be putting them down, especially when they don’t dress perfectly every day.

A few minutes of anger had passed and I noticed that the “boutique” and “career center” were more cluttered than normal. There were random hangers, shoes, bags of unsorted donations, and various racks stuffed to the brim with clothing everywhere. The place had looked as though a tornado had passed through. While I was looking around, Analisa was trying to think of what should be done first. It became uncomfortably silent not including the sporadic murmurs coming from Analisa. Finally, she decided that she had three “important” jobs for us to complete. She had Paige go through a box of random make-up donations and sort them by product type, Nikki was told to separate usable hangers from those which needed to be donated, which is shown in the figure below, and my task was to go through and hang up a pile of clothing that had been thrown on and around a chair. In other words, we were told to pick up after them. I understand that not all volunteer work directly corresponds with working with others or doing something entertaining, but I don’t think what we have been doing is worthy volunteer work.

Saying Maybe to Dress for Success

Dress for Success Lexington was my number one choice out of the five options of service groups, and I wanted to volunteer there very badly. I was inspired by the content of their website and the heart-felt stories of women in poverty who were able to turn their lives around because of this organization. I was eager to get started volunteering at Dress for Success in hopes that I would be able to make an obvious difference in someone’s life.

My involvement began when two other members of my group, Nikki and Paige, and I went to our volunteer orientation on a Tuesday after class. We watched a promo video about all of the meaningful work Dress for Success does for their clients, as well as discussed our plan for future volunteer dates. I was ecstatic to begin, and I knew working face-to-face with underprivileged women would be very humbling.

However, my expectations of this volunteer work fell short. After having to wait multiple days for responses to emails and constantly being in a state of confusion, we found a time that would work with our various schedules. When we showed up for our first day of actual volunteering, the volunteer coordinator seemed to have forgotten that we were coming. Nonetheless, she explained that they are always in need of extra hands since they are regularly busy. I expected that meant we would have more freedom and responsibility when working with the clients; once again I was wrong. The “important” tasks at hand were cutting out our name tags, putting pictures from a folder into a PowerPoint presentation, sorting one rack of clothing in size order, and hemming one pair of pants. These tasks seemed to be busy work that were simply pushed aside in the Coordinators’ to do list since they were tedious and insignificant. I hope that this was a one-time incident, and real work will be done in our next visit to Dress for Success.