New digs for Elgin Junior Service Board clothes site

Since 1970, the Elgin Junior Service Board has helped families in need through its Clothing Distribution Center by providing garments at no cost.

The service board developed the clothing center back then “because kids and women who couldn’t afford it needed clothes,” said Elizabeth McCoy, current chairwoman of the board’s Clothing Distribution Center. While it has moved over the years, until recently it was in the basement of a downtown Elgin bank. But that building kept getting water in the basement, and it wasn’t an ideal location for the service.

That’s where Kathy Greenwood came in. As the vice president for marketing and development for the Association for Individual Development, and an associate JSB member, Greenwood heard the service board was looking for a new location for its clothing center.

AID’s job training center in Elgin opened four years ago to provide vocational training and work opportunities for its clients. However, Greenwood said, the small assembly work they’d hope to offer clients there has never fully materialized because those jobs have been outsourced to other countries.

That warehouse space, however, was perfect for the JSB’s clothing center, Greenwood said.

AID’s goals are very similar to JSB’s and the other community and social aid groups the two work with, McCoy said: helping people become more independent and financially stable. Many of their clients or their clients’ families can and have used the clothing center services in the past, Greenwood said.

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