Ger Fowler on the new Veterans into Clothing project being launched in Sunderland

Transcript

00:00Jer, we're down here at Veterans in Crisis in Pallion and you're launching the Veterans

00:05Into Clothing initiative. Can you talk us through the project?

00:07Yeah, so Veterans Into Clothing is a new initiative that we've partnered with

00:11Woven Inc Limited in Washington where we get surplus brand new clothes and we're going to

00:15give them away to people in Sunderland for free.

00:17And how do people go about getting the clothing? Is it a referral service?

00:21Yeah, people can be referred through five different services at the moment, plus if you're a veteran

00:26you can come through us. So the services are Sara in Southwick, Lampton Street, Pallion Action Group,

00:32Gen 2 and Love Amelia. But there will be more at a later date once this starts.

00:38And it's really good quality clothing, isn't it?

00:40It's excellent clothing. We've Googled and they are quite expensive, some of the items.

00:44Can you talk us through some of the brands that you've got?

00:46We have a lot of Hummel stuff. We have a lot of skaters, hoodies, surfing things from all over

00:55the country. We've got some Everton Football Club stuff, some Oldham Football Club. We've even got

01:00some stuff from Northampton town.

01:02And there are some people in the community who are really in need of new clothing, aren't there?

01:06Yeah, so when me and Ian got chatting, so Ian Taylor being the guy from Woven Inc,

01:10we got chatting and both of us sort of despised the fact that kids get bullied for having rubbish

01:15clothes. And we just thought it would be nice to be able to do something for the whole community,

01:20not just veterans. So people will come along and pick some nice clothes for themselves.

01:25They'll have a private appointment so no one knows that they're getting stuff for free.

01:29And hopefully it'll just grow bigger. So if there's any other companies that want to give

01:33us brand new clothes to give away and we can advertise, that would be brilliant.