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Dignity U Wear wants "Learning with Dignity" for Clay County students.

The Jacksonville-based national clothing ministry has launched a back-to-school campaign to make sure Clay students from needy families have appropriate clothing to wear to class when the 2010-11 school year begins in August.

Free.

The nonprofit agency is seeking donations and will use the money to buy new clothing,tiffany, which is warehoused for distribution to school social workers familiar with specific schools’ children in need.

"They order for a single child,tiffany earrings," said Bob Bryan, the agency’s executive director. "We pick and pack. … It doesn’t make sense for us to hold onto clothing people need."

The goal of the drive, he said, is for every needy child to have three new outfits. But Dignity U Wear answers social workers’ calls year-round.

"The campaign is over the summer. The demand is all year long but the first day of school we want them to have a nice outfit," Bryan said.

A $10 donation can fully clothe a child from a low-income family.

The agency fills social workers’ requests from a warehouse on Myrtle Avenue in Jacksonville, where volunteers sort clothing obtained from the apparel industry. The items are placed in boxes, which are stacked on rows of tall shelves in the warehouse, ready to be opened as each need arises.

"We solicit apparel from the industry, from overstock, cancellations, returns," Bryan said. "There is less of that with the economy. … We are subject to the whims of the market. We may get shirts and not pants."

Bryan and staff do not get to see firsthand the outcome of their work — children in their new outfits — but they get thank-you notes from children, mothers and social workers. Some of the notes are posted on a wall in the sorting room to inspire volunteers and staff.

In one correspondence,tiffany key rings, Clay County social worker Jean Pease reported on the outcome of her request for clothes for a neglected 9-year-old girl whose mother died in a drug overdose.

"Your clothing box made this little girl so happy," Pease said.

Dignity U Wear was founded in 2000 in Jacksonville by Belgian-born philanthropist Henri Landwirth, who as a Holocaust survivor "knows what it means not to have clothes," according to the agency website. Brand new clothing is distributed to men,tiffany cuff Links, women and children in need through a network of 300-plus social service agencies in 50 states, including Clay and Duval public schools.

Dignity U Wear has provided more than 6.6 million pieces, valued at $112 million, to more than 435,000 people.

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To help

Send a check to Dignity U Wear at 136 N. Myrtle Ave., Jacksonville, FL 32204 or donate online at www.dignityuwear.org. For more information, call 636-9455 or go to www.dignityuwear.org. Volunteers are needed to sort clothing on weekdays. Volunteers age 16 and younger must have an adult chaperone.~~~