Making A Difference In Your Community : Center Dresses Poor Children in New Clothes

On a sleepy Van Nuys street, a two-story, powder blue bungalow started filling up with children. They marched up and down the staircase as their parents waited in a front room warmed by the heat of small bodies.

Victoria Gamboa Lopez sat in one of a dozen white folding chairs lining the room and waited for two of her sons to come down the stairs, each with a brown paper grocery sack full of newclothes.

Like the others, she’d come to the bungalow to get the school clothes she can’t afford to buy her children. Her husband, a driver, has been out of work, and she’s looked for work as well, to no avail.

Upstairs, volunteers at the Centre Clothes Corner, were fitting Lopez’s youngest children, ages 8 and 11, with colorful sweat suits, jeans, shirts, shoes, socks and underwear.

They are among 2,200 San Fernando Valley schoolchildren who walk out of the historic 1921 home each year with new clothes.

Started in 1972, the Clothes Corner runs on donations and the time of workers from the Volunteer League of San Fernando. Children are referred to the center through school nurses and social services agencies, who make appointments for them to be fitted September through May, usually two mornings a week.

On this Tuesday, 46 children passed through the center in two hours. Project Chairman Colette Udall ushered people in, marking down their appointments and handing children shopping bags with their names and ages marked in black ink.

Using hand signals or other mothers to interpret, Udall guided the mostly Spanish-speaking families through the center as volunteers scurried up the stairs, grasping children’s hands and bringing outfit after outfit to be tried.

Upstairs, in the girls storage room, Pat Hufford tried to find a sweat suit for a girl with a fondness for turquoise. She picked up a turquoise outfit covered with purple polka dots.

“Isn’t that the same one we gave her sister?” asked Robyn Scanlon, peeking out from the racks of dresses. Hufford found two new sets, one white, one black, with turquoise trim. She put the white outfit back.

“I like the black. It doesn’t show dirt,” she said. “You can tell I have boys.”

The children are much happier having a choice of what color or style they take home, Hufford said.

“They’re not basic gray sweats that are dull and boring,” Hufford said. “Kids know styles. They want something contemporary. They want to look good.”

For some of the children, these outfits are the first new clothes they’ve had, said Udall.

“Sometimes you look at the clothes and see they’ve been passed down so many years,” she said. “I’ve seen shoes tied with string.”

Scanlon has given clothes to children who wouldn’t undress because they didn’t own underwear and children who wore the visible ankle portion of their socks, even though the heels and toes were long worn away.

“It’s just taking care of a real basic need,” Scanlon said of the center. “They’re happy when they leave here. They’re excited because many of them haven’t had anything new. It makes me feel good to know they feel good.”

To volunteer, call the Volunteer League at (818) 785-4134.

Other volunteer opportunities:

Friends of the Granada Hills Library needs volunteers to help set up their Saturday book sales at 7 a.m. and help take down tables and shelves after the sales. Ask for Evelyn at (818) 363-6674.

The Retired Senior Volunteer Program needs volunteers 55 or older to help in school libraries and to serve as teachers’ aides and tutors. RSVP also needs escorts to drive cancer patients to their medical treatments and to take hospital patients to their appointments. Call the Panorama City-based RSVP at (818) 908-5070.

Getting Involved is a weekly listing of volunteering opportunities. Please address prospective listings to Getting Involved, Los Angeles Times, 20000 Prairie St., Chatsworth, 91311. Or fax them to (818) 772-3338.