FIGHTING CLOTHING INSECURITY WHILE BOOSTING SUSTAINABILITY

Meet Daily Point of Light Award honoree Hannah Sim. Read her story, and nominate an outstanding volunteer or family as a Daily Point of Light.

Hannah Sim’s inspiration to start The Mitten was forged by a desire to help others.

As a child, Hannah realized that not everyone has the items they need to survive. While some people have closets filled to the brim with clothing, others lack the simple necessities to stay warm on a daily basis. In an attempt to bridge the gap between the two, The Mitten was born. A student-led organization, The Mitten provides support to under resourced communities by distributing clothes and hygiene products.

The Mitten’s work to battle clothing insecurity is also a tremendous effort toward sustainable practices. Since clothing and textiles are a significant chunk of the waste that sits in global landfills, Hannah is also tackling the problem of overconsumption. Through each clothing drive she hosts, items that likely would have either sat in a closet or found their way to the garbage are given new life as a piece to keep someone warm and healthy.

As a 17-year-old high school student, Hannah has a lot on her plate these days. Still, she says continuing The Mitten’s mission comes naturally to her, particularly since she enjoys doing it so much. With every clothing bin that Hannah places in a library, church or school, she is demonstrating her passion for helping others. Her spirit for volunteering should serve as an inspiration to anyone around her.

What inspired you to get started with this initiative?

I first gained inspiration to start my nonprofit when I visited New York City. I moved to New York in 2017 and when I first visited New York City, I was shocked by the number of unhoused individuals who were living in the city. That was something that I wanted to make a change in. I wanted to help these people in some kind of way, and one way that I found that I could help these people was through clothing and bridging the gap between the privileged and the underprivileged by repurposing the clothing that people don’t need and cycling it back to people that require them as an essential commodity.

Tell us about your volunteer role with The Mitten.

We host monthly clothing drives. Every month we get in contact with a new organization or an organization that we’ve already established a partnership with. We place bins and collect them when they’re full as part of our monthly process. Then, we get in contact with a local shelter and donate the items.

We also stay in contact with all the different organizations. We send out monthly emails to every organization that we reached out to and worked with in the past, and we kind of keep them updated in our statistics and make sure that if any future clothing donations are coming up, we make sure to update them on those.

What are your long-term plans or goals for the organization?

I think right now we just want to expand our organization more. Currently, we have eight chapters around the world, but we want to create more chapters, even just within the United States. Also, we’d like to bring in more volunteers for each chapter so we’re able to help more people. At the same time, we’d like to reduce the amount of clothing that is going to landfills, which really helps with our sustainability goals.

What’s been the most rewarding part of your work?

I think just seeing individual stories that we sometimes receive back from the shelters that we donate to. We sometimes get information about how the lives of the people who received our clothing were changed and how they were impacted by the donations that we were able to provide them. And I think that’s just really inspiring and helps us keep going—just seeing how much change we were able to bring in these individual’s lives.

What have you learned through your experiences as a volunteer?

Volunteering is rewarding. Even though the process itself is not meant to help you, since it’s meant to benefit other people, just knowing how much other people’s lives could be affected by it just helps me keep going. I think I learned about the importance of helping other people and putting their lives in front of my own comfort, even if it’s more difficult.

Why is it important for others to get involved with causes they care about?

I think stepping out and being the first one to start an initiative is difficult, but I think it’s through these individuals who step out of their comfort zone that real change can be made. Without these people, the world wouldn’t be the same. We have to be the change that we want to see or nothing else is going to happen. I think we have to step out and that will also inspire others to do things that they want to see changed in the world.

Any advice for people who want to start volunteering?

Try to focus on what specific areas you really want to address. For me, that was both the environmental aspect of it and also the humanitarian aspect of helping people. If they have clear goals set on what exactly they want to accomplish, then they’ll be able to follow others who’ve done similar things in the past and create their own form of helping people in these specific areas.

What do you want people to learn from your story?

I think something I want people to learn is these are things that I never thought that I could accomplish as a teenager. But I think everyone, as long as they have their mind set on what changes they want to see in the world, no matter how old they are, can accomplish things that they never thought they could. Inspiration is so important and having your goal set is important. I want to tell everyone that it’s possible, even as a young student, to make the change you want.

Do you want to make a difference in your community like Hannah? Find local volunteer opportunities.