OLA Clothing Drive

When and Where

When: November 08, 2026
Timeline: 9:00 am — 12:00 pm

Location: Our Lady of Angels / In front of the church, 4th Avenue

Three or four times a year, Our Lady of Angels collects clothing for its charity partners, and Troop 23 works the collection. Neighbors drive up, scouts take the bags out of the car, sort them, and load the transport truck. That is the whole event, and the parish counts on it.

The autumn drive is the busiest of them, for the obvious reason — this is when Bay Ridge changes over its closets, and a season's worth of outgrown coats and shoes comes out at once.

For scouts it is the least complicated service of the year: three hours, ten minutes from home, no forms and no travel. It is also a straightforward way to accumulate service hours for rank advancement.

If You Are Donating

Drive up to the church on 4th Avenue any time between 9:00 am and noon on Sunday. No appointment, no sorting required, and you do not need to get out of the car — scouts will unload it for you.

The parish accepts gently used clothing, shoes, and household textiles. Things should be clean, dry and bagged. What the parish cannot use goes to textile recycling rather than to landfill, so a bag of worn-out clothing is still worth bringing.

You do not need to be a parishioner and you do not need to have anything to do with the troop. The drive is open to the whole neighborhood, and telling a neighbor about it is genuinely useful to us.

If You Are a Scout

All scouts are expected to take part. Father Abels relies on the troop for this project, and our turnout is the most visible way we say thank you to the parish that has housed us since 1946.

The work: welcome donors as they pull up, take bags from cars, keep the collection area organised, and load the truck at the end. It is more physical than it sounds — three hours of lifting.

Tell your patrol leader which shift you can work, and answer promptly when they reach out. Partial shifts are fine; the drive is busiest in the first hour after the morning Masses let out.

Uniform

Class A or Class B, with official green pants. Not jeans, not sweatpants. We are standing outside our own church in front of the whole parish, representing the troop and Scouting America, and this is the one detail that people notice.

Dress for standing outdoors in November — a layer under the uniform shirt, and gloves if you have them.

Our Lady of Angels Church

The Drives, and the Rest of the Year

The parish collects three or four times a year, and the troop works every one:

• Autumn — this one, the biggest.
• Winter — February, the quietest.
• Spring — May, the month the troop also runs its own flower sale.

Some years bring a fourth, in late summer — the last was August 2026.

Alongside them the troop keeps up a run of parish and neighborhood service: preparing the church for Christmas and Easter, the marathon water station, the Memorial Day parade, and the Giving Tree in December.