A spooky spectacular: Nanaimo group celebrates five years of giving back
Armet said as they grow every year, the amount of costumes they are able to collect and donate, grows as well. (Lauryn Mackenzie/ CHLY 101.7FM)
A local society is celebrating five years working to decrease clothing waste and to make the cost of Halloween a little less spooky.
After seeing many struggling parents in Nanaimo post to social media every Halloween in search of free or low cost costumes for their kids, Amie Armet knew she wanted to find a way to help.
“I'd see parents asking around Halloween for Halloween costumes, saying that things are tight this month, and they could barely afford food, so they weren't able to get a costume,” Armet said. “There's a lot of people asking on groups online just for donations of Halloween costumes, and I noticed that people were very generous with their giving of costumes, but it just seemed like we could really streamline the process a little bit.”
Getting to work, Armet gathered a small group of friends and family, and started to collect donated Halloween costumes. All together they received around 70 costumes in their first year, and distributed them for free at Country Club Centre.
In the beginning she worked with the non-profit Mamas for Mamas, then later formed a partnership with Nanaimo Science, before officially forming last year as the West Coast Costume Society.
The society now has around eight volunteers who collect donations and host an annual Costume Boo-tique.
“As it grows each year, it just gets more and more exciting as we're able to collect more costumes and then also put out more each year,” she said.
Drop off boxes for costumes were located at the Nanaimo branches of the Vancouver Island Regional Library. After collecting the donations, the society hosts their annual one-day Costume Boo-tique where kids and adults can browse and take home a donated costume free of charge.
This year’s event took place this past weekend at Country Club Centre.
“So we have a bunch of baby costumes, and we accept all the way up to adult, or for any size kid that needs it for Halloween, or any time throughout the year,” she said. “People are welcome to take a costume just for if they want to play with it throughout the year.”
With everyday costs going up, Armet said she started to see an increased need for free Halloween costumes.
“We've definitely seen an increase in people using the program, which is amazing,” she said. “That's mostly probably in part to just people learning more about the event as it carries on each year, but we also see a lot of people returning each year, saying how much they value the ability to come and pick out a costume.”
She said as they grow every year, the amount of costumes they are able to collect and donate, grows as well.
“We really lucked out the first couple years because a costume store went out of business and donated all their brand new costumes to us,” she said. “So we had a really good stockpile to start with, and then each year we collect from the three Vancouver Island Regional Library branches, and I would say we probably bring in about 200 to 300 costumes through that.”
Last year they gave out around 350 costumes, at this past Sunday’s event they handed out over 400.
While trends come and go, Armet said there are two costumes that are always popular.
“We definitely get a lot of Disney princesses, and those come and then they go very quickly. They are always hot,” she said. “Then also, little kid animal type costumes are always popular.”
Along with being able to support the community by offering free costumes, Armet said another big part of collecting and giving out second-hand costumes is keeping them from ending up in the land fill.
“I just want to emphasise that it is for not just affordability but sustainability,” she said.
According to the society, over the last five years over 1,000 costumes have been given a second or even third life.
Starting this year, the society has reached out to PACs at schools around School District 68 inviting teachers and school representatives to come to the last hour of the Costume Boo-tique and grab as many costumes as they want to bring back to their schools for kids who might not have been able to attend the event.
Armet said any costumes left over get sorted and saved for next year.
“So after the event, we have a very efficient sorting system where we take all the size costumes, put them back in our labelled totes,” she said. “We take them to a nice secure storage area where we keep them until next year when we pull them back out again and add to them.”
She said seeing hundreds of kids come every year to pick who they want to be for Halloween is what keeps them going.
“It's just so exciting just to see the kids come in and they get the choice. They can come in, they can browse like a store, and they can kind of have that power to choose which one that they want, and then they leave smiling,” she said. “Usually, they've already got it on by the time they've left, and they're just happy and looking forward to Halloween.”
Now that this year’s Costume Boo-tique is over, Armet and the West Coast Costume Society are already planning out next year’s event so once again kids can choose who they want to be.
More information about volunteering and how to support next year’s Boo-tique can be found on their website www.westcoastcostumesociety.com.
Funding Note: This story was produced with funding support from the Local Journalism Initiative, administered by the Community Radio Fund of Canada.
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