At the end of the day, children file out of classrooms and adults out of work buildings and offices. Some congregate at a house at the end of the day, but others may not.
For the unhoused families in the Akron area, there are organizations to help specifically in local areas such as Family Promise. Community care allows families a home and resources to thrive.
Revere sophomore Ethan Scherr started Revere’s Socktober program in 2023 along with sophomore classmate Max Light went to Revere High School (RHS) Principal Doug Faris about hosting Socktober again this year.
Socktober is a sock drive that collects socks all of October in bins and posters advertising all throughout all Revere School buildings. The idea originally came to Scherr when he was curious about what was the most common donation needed in homeless shelters, which happened to be socks.
Scherr said that when doing the research, “One of the ways you could collect was collect through . . . school[s]” and that they got the idea for the posters from Old Trail where Light used to go. Scherr “saw one of their photos and redid it like it is now.”
When Scherr and Light got the idea originally, they went to Leigh Haynam, the Freshman Class Council adviser and an English teacher at RHS, and Faris for approval and support.
Faris agreed to the idea last year and approved the students’ idea again for this year, allowing them to post bins to collect the socks as well as posters encouraging and reminding students to bring socks throughout the school.
“I saw it as a valuable thing and wanted to help the kids as much as possible, so I allowed them to put up bins all around the school.
And ultimately, it’s up to them to promote it. I did put it in my parent letter. I think it is a very good cause,” Faris said.
The socks donated during Socktober go to the local Family Promise location in Hudson that needs a high donation of socks. The operations manager for the Hudson location Pauline Egan discussed the importance of the sock donation to the community and what students could do to help support the unhoused population if they cannot donate socks or would prefer to do a more in-contact form of volunteering.
“Socks are always a high item. . . . A lot of families . . . might not be able to bring all of their personal belongings, and they . . . tend to go to the necessary items and sometimes smaller things, like [socks], end up going by the wayside, and they end up losing a lot of their personal belongings when they come into the shelter,” Egan said.
Family Promise is looking for certain types of socks to use for their program. Socks must be new, clean and in packaging. Family Promise is looking for particular sizes of socks past just any socks.
Egan said, “We serve more children than we do adults, so all various sizes of children’s socks from infant [to] toddler to young children. There is always . . . a higher need [for kids] than adult size socks for us, particularly because we serve homeless families with children.”
Family Promise does not define a family nor push away small or large families; they serve all kinds of families ranging from one adult to multi-generational.
Egan said, “More often than not, there [are] more children in the family unit than there are adults. . . . Very occasionally, it’s two adults and one child.”
There are many other opportunities to support family promise if students cannot participate in the sock donation currently going on.
Egan said that students can look at the “website [or] sign up for [the] newsletter . . . to see if [Family Promise] ever have any . . . volunteer opportunities.”
Another way the public can support Family promise is through monetary donations, which Family Promise always accepts.
Egan said that even when “interacting with adults that are homeless on the streets, . . . just be compassionate to their situation.”
Egan suggests not giving them money but physical gifts to help. Egan said to have a “toothbrush or band aids, . . . a pair of socks or a snack. . . . Basic toiletry items.” Egan suggests “letting them know they can contact . . . community support services or agencies like United Way which is . . . an easy number: 211.”
Egan said, “A family may not have looked up any information yet on trying to get help, and that might be the thing that they . . . may not even know.”
One way for students to support the community during socktober is to donate socks in one of the many bins around RHS. If students are unable to donate socks, they can support Family Promise in other ways by donating time by volunteering or making monetary donations.
