Local & State Headlines

Official: Coat drive nearing goal

• The deadline to donate coats for needy families this year is Jan. 31.

Joshua Brown

ALBANY – One Warm Coat officials say they have nearly met their goal of receiving 500 donated coats this year and have extended the cutoff period for the drive to the end of January.

The project has received about 400 coats so far, but project coordinator Kevin Hogencamp said he expects to receive up to 1,000 coats by the end of the drive, which has been extended to Jan. 31.

"Now that a lot of the public service announcements are kicking in, the coats are coming in at a much greater pace," he said.

Last year the drive obliterated its 500-coat goal by receiving more than 2,200 coats, earning its way onto a news segment on a Weather Channel program in the process. This is the second year for Albany's coat drive.

Hogencamp attributed the fewer number of coats this year to several things, including less promotion of the drive, warm weather, a shorter donation period and the possibility that Albany resident donated all their surplus coats last year.

Despite not having the same overwhelming success as last year, Hogencamp said he was pleased with the results thus far.

"I'm tickled, even though I'm sure we won't come anywhere near our ... number of 2,218 coats (last year)," he said. "It's just fabulous. Without a whole lot of effort on our part, we were able to coordinate with the community to dig into their closets and their attics, and in some cases (residents went) to a department store and got a new coat."

The One Warm Coat project is organized locally by Central Monitoring and is part of a national organization that collects and distributes coats to those in need.

The coats are distributed locally through the Southwest Georgia Food Bank.

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