Make sure your donations go to refugees and Ottawa residents in need

Councillor Rick Chiarelli would like to announce a coordinated effort by Capital Welcomes, other local community groups (such as Ottawa Neighbourhood Services, the Salvation Army and St. Vincent de Paul, etc.) and with support from Refugee613 that will help ensure that donations of clothing for both refugees and long time Ottawa residents make it to their intended recipients.

People of Ottawa are generous and want to help local charities. Many people are also organizing clothing drives and collecting donated items with the aim of supporting newly arrived refugees. But settlement agencies and Refugee 613 are not set up to accept donated goods and are asking the public to donate them to charity. At the same time, Ottawa unfortunately has a number of false clothing donation boxes, run by unscrupulous operators who sell the clothing for profit. This creates a shortage of clothing among Ottawa residents who need it and leads to long-time charitable organizations like Ottawa Neighbourhood Services unable to fulfill the needs of their clients..

With the help of Councillor Chiarelli, Capital Welcomes, Ottawa Neighbourhood Services, the Salvation Army and St. Vincent de Paul (among others) are happy to accept new or gently used clothing over the holiday season and beyond for the purpose of helping refugees and our local vulnerable population. These not-for-profit groups, many of whom have been serving Ottawa for decades, will assure that the right donations go to both refugees and the poor of Ottawa.

With an estimated 400 new fraudulent donation boxes installed around the City this summer, donors need reliable advice on which bins are legitimate. The Capital Welcomes Facebook Page, the Refugee613 website as well as Councillor Rick Chiarelli’s website will include a map and locator tool that will help residents find legitimate drop-off spots. (See the map here.) For the past two years, Councillor Chiarelli has been working with organizations like ONS, etc. and City staff to try to develop a new by-law that will make fraudulent and misleading clothing donation boxes illegal. With the upcoming influx of refugees from Syria, we need to rely on public awareness in the time before a new by-law is introduced. We encourage those who want to donate items to go to the above mentioned websites and find the locations of legitimate clothing bins.

None of these organizations are soliciting by phone for cash donations.