THE community council in Gaggin has raised almost €5,000 in aid of their new car park, thanks to a recent pandemic friendly drive-thru clothes collection event.
The event saw people arriving with unwanted clothes and other household items to drop off at the only fundraising event planned by the community for 2020.
‘We had lots of fundraising events to help with the cost of the new car park planned for this year but due to Covid-19 we had to rethink and adapt to the situation,’ Kate Crowley of Gaggin Community Council told The Southern Star.
‘With all the lockdown decluttering going on we decided that a clothes donation drive-thru would be a great idea.’
‘We know that a lot of families out there were using the time to clear out the shed, or the spare room and would be looking for somewhere to get rid of all this stuff.’
The Community Council organised a Covidsafe collection area within the new car park and the donations began to arrive.
‘We don’t think there is a part of West Cork that hasn’t dropped off some bit of unwanted clothes,’ Kate said. ‘From Bantry right up to Cork City we’ve collected almost 12 tonnes of donations and we want to thank everyone who came along and observed social distancing to help us with this very important new addition to the community.’
‘The car park is vital now as our new and long awaited community pre-school facility called Superstars will be starting in September,’ she added.
‘We want to thank everyone who has donated and of course all those who worked so hard to ensure that the drive-thru clothes collection was a great success and was, above all, safe.’