On March 29, more than 50 youth volunteers from Youth League Committee and Youth Organization of Civil Affairs under the Ministry of Civil Affairs went to Tianjin to participate in the volunteer service activity of China Children and Teenagers’ Fund (CCTF) Recycle Clothes For Love public welfare activity with practical actions to help targeted poverty alleviation.

In 2016, under the guidance of the All-China Women’s Federation, CCTF launched the Recycle Clothes For Love charity program. The program set up used clothes recycling boxes in the communities so that the public can donate directly and the recycling staff will collect them regularly. The staff will sort the used clothes after recycling, and the used clothes with high utilization value will be directly donated to poor families after unified cleaning, disinfection and finishing, while the used clothes that are not suitable for recycling will be consumed and treated for recycling.

At about 10 am on the 29th, young volunteers of Civil Affairs came to the Tianjin Material Base of Recycle Clothes For Love with donated clothes. After the brief training of the base staff, the volunteers quickly put on masks and gloves, and methodically put into their own work: rough sorting, fine sorting, cleaning, packaging, handling, and so on.

Volunteer receive masks and gloves

The task of the rough sorting team is to conduct a preliminary screening of clothes donated by the public according to the principle of “not dirty, not broken, generous and warm”. the selected clothes will have the chance to be transferred to the residents in poor areas, and the rejected clothe will enter the recycling area. Faced with a lot of clothes, shoes, hats and blankets, the volunteers of the rough sorting team selected the clothes carefully and patiently, and consulted the professional staff nearby, fearing that they would miss any valuable clothes.

“I have been involved in other recycling programs where we need to find clothes from the rubbish heap that people have left behind. The process here is more formal and convenient,” said the volunteer at the top of the rough sorting line, pointing to the conveyor belt in front of him, “Just now the staff introduced that the qualified clothes we handle will be donated to poor families in Daliangshan and Yunnan, which exactly fits our original intention to do something for poverty alleviation.”

Volunteers working in the rough sorting area

In the packing area, volunteers fold up the clothes that have been washed, dried, ironed and ultraviolet disinfected and put them in transparent bags. The seemingly simple work is actually not easy. To make the folded clothes save space, but also as flat as possible in the bag, to avoid transportation squeeze and bag leakage, is a big challenge to many volunteers.

“The civil affairs system has organized several clothes donations, and I have participated in many similar online and on-site programs, but the actual experience were very different. For example, as a donor, I thought more about the color and style of clothes, but didn’t think that the main need of the recipient is to keep warm and practical, which is a big gain for me by participating in this event”, said a volunteer.

Volunteers are ironing clothes

Volunteers are packing and giving away clothes

Around noon, a dozen of young volunteers formed a team and sent bags of clothes, which indicated the number of items and the location of the recipients, to a heavy-duty logistics vehicle bound for the Lahu Autonomous County in Lancang, Pu’er, Yunnan province. In the cold open-air warehouse, volunteers’ heads soon began to sweat.

According to the statistics of the base staff, the youth volunteers of civil affairs donated 273 pieces of clothes, weighing nearly 97 kg in total, and participated in the sorting and loading of 14,580 pieces of clothes, among which the transferred clothes weighed 8.8 tons.

Volunteers are handing out love bags of clothes

Transfer clothes carrier

In the afternoon of the same day, a seminar on poverty alleviation was held at the base of Recycle Clothes For Love. Zhu Xisheng, secretary-general of CCTF, expressed his sincerely appreciation to the civil affairs youth volunteers for their enthusiastic participation in the public welfare program and introduced the future development plan of CCTF. Staff of the program introduced the operation condition of the Recycle Clothes For Love.

Volunteers gave a speech at the seminar of poverty alleviation

During the communication session, many volunteers said that they were deeply touched by the volunteer service, and shared their impressive stories of poverty alleviation in the grassroots research, as well as further discussed how to better meet the needs of the public in the daily work.