CWS Blankets Bring Thanksgiving Warmth in Washington State
Many of the clients at Concern for Neighbors Food Bank in Mountlake Terrace, Washington, had a little something extra to be grateful for this Thanksgiving: snuggly CWS Blankets! The food bank provides food and some household supplies to hundreds of people each Tuesday morning, and they added 100 CWS Blankets to their distribution during the week of Thanksgiving 2024. It was the fourth time in five years that CWS supplied blankets for the team at Concern for Neighbors to give out.
Concern for Neighbors begins their distribution at 9:30 a.m. and has been using a drive-through format since 2020. Clients line up in their cars and neighbors often carpool so that one car may represent a few families. The line of cars often snakes around the block.
Above: Sasha (right) stands next to the CWS Blankets that were distributed in November 2024. Below: CWS Blankets are prepared for distribution.
On the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, Sasha got in line in her car at 5:30 in the morning, four hours before distribution began. It was a cold and cloudy day, typical of the Seattle area this time of year. “I’m not going to keep my car running that long. It’s a waste of gas,” she said. While she waited, Sasha curled up under a gray wool CWS Blanket that she had received during a previous year and napped. “It definitely comes in handy. Sometimes jackets aren’t enough, especially because you don’t want to keep your car running,” she said.
Sasha says that she keeps the gray blanket in her car all the time. “I actually go to work pretty early, so that way I get a good parking spot and don’t have to pay like $60 for parking,” she said. “I use the blanket to take naps in my car before work.”
Thankfully, Sasha has received both a gray wool blanket and a yellow fleece blanket during that earlier distribution. “The yellow one is for in my house when I’m cuddled up on the couch, because I don’t have heat in my house,” she said. “I haven’t had [the heat] on in five years, so it’s extra cold in the house and I need an extra blanket.”
“Thank you for the blanket and the thought of it,” Sasha says to the people who make the CWS Blankets program possible. “The material is the best part about it, just because a lot of wool things are hard to find or way more expensive.”
The clients at Concern for Neighbors will use their CWS Blankets to meet all sorts of needs. Some clients don’t have permanent housing and rely on the blankets for warmth in the cold Washington winters. Some, like Sasha, need that extra boost of warmth in chilly homes and cars. Others need the blankets for new babies or newly-arriving extended family. No matter how they put the blankets to use, all of these neighbors are wrapped up in love as a result of the CWS Blankets program.
To learn more about how you can get involved in the CWS Blankets program, click here.