Thanksgiving is a time for families to come together and celebrate everything they have been blessed with. While the holidays are a time to reflect on our blessings, we also should keep those less fortunate than us in mind.
The Thanksgiving holiday typically invigorates a great deal of people to “do good” in their community. Often, this comes in the form of food drives for those less fortunate during the holidays. That common aspect of food drives influenced our decision to do a clothing donation.
Kevin Gonzalez, one of the associate buyers at CarBrain, took the lead on organizing a clothing drive within the office. “So many other companies and organizations focus on food drives...there’s only so much food you can provide [and] they, unfortunately, don’t have a pantry, fridge, or freezer to store whatever is given to them.”
The plan was set in motion: collect clothing and organize them into individual care packages with two shirts, two shorts, new underwear, and a hygiene kit. The clothes would be collected over the course of two weeks.
With the intent of making as big of an impact as possible, we opened the donations up to the entire CAS Auto Group umbrella. With all hands on deck, we set our goal for 50 individual care packages!
CarBrainers brought in clothing donations for the next two weeks. The outpouring of donations came to a head when we made it an event to sort through all the donations and organize them by size and gender. They covered two whole tables completely, spilling off of them even!
The Sunday morning of November 21, we met in downtown Miami near the Miami Dade Main Library. to hand out the donations. Cris Escobar, another CarBrainer, was familiar with a group of people who lived beneath the I-95 expressway. We connected with them and ran out of our care packages within five minutes.
Kevin briefly reflects on the moment: “The experience makes you feel great, but you can’t help the grim feeling of knowing so many people struggle like that.”
While the reality of people experiencing homelessness is a rough one, coming together as a team to help them in some way is a great feeling. With the hands-on support from top leadership all the way down, it’s wonderful to come together and achieve a big goal.
While the Thanksgiving drive was a great opportunity for CarBrainers to come together and support our community, the holidays aren't over yet and we're gearing up for another round.
With Christmas right around the corner, a toy drive for children who have to spend their holiday in the hospital is in the works. Here’s to keeping the trend of caring for the community rolling!