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Coat drive gets 1,702

• The second annual One Warm Coat drive collected 1,702 winter coats this year.

Susan McCord

ALBANY — After the initial drive netted 2,218 coats, organizers weren’t sure if metro Albany would have coats left to give during a second winter “One Warm Coat” drive.

“Our first year was so incredibly wonderful and successful, so we were wondering...” organizer Kevin Hogencamp said.

“But there were plenty of coats stored away, or that kids had outgrown that folks were kind enough to pass along to their friends and neighbors.”

With Albany’s 11 fire stations, businesses and churches serving as collection points, and Food Bank of Southwest Georgia as distributor, the One Warm Coat project collected 1,702 new and gently used coats during its second season.

“The program is an incredible collaboration that demonstrated that the Albany community is caring and compassionate,” Hogencamp said in a statement.

“Central Monitoring is eternally grateful to our project’s many, many partners,” he said. “The project was a blessing to all of us who had an hand in it.”

Partners included the Fire Department, Food Bank and Chick-fil-A Drive-Thru.

The project was founded when alarm company Central Monitoring co-owner Judy Randle heard of a similar drive in another community and thought, “That’s a nice thing to do, it’s an important thing to do and it’s something the community could do together,” Hogencamp said.

The success of the project he attributes both to “Albany’s news media being quite gracious,” including its three newspapers and two television stations,” and its “very gracious, caring community that responds as we always do when we really need to.”

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