Winter Warmth

Winter Warmth 2024

We're in need of volunteers to be part of our largest annual mission project, Winter Warmth, where we distribute brand-new coats to children in need across Spartanburg County.

Volunteer jobs include helping with set-up, check-in, parking lot attendees, translators, and shoppers. We are also accepting donations of new scarfs, gloves, and winter hats.

Winter Warmth will take place on October 26 this year. If you're interested in volunteering, please click the button below to sign up!

Unable to volunteer, but still want to help?

For a gift of $35, you can help supply a winter coat to a local child in need! Click the button below to make your donation!

Over 20 years and 36,000 coats later, First Presbyterian Church Spartanburg is still striving to keep Spartanburg County school children warm. Begun as an initiative of the church’s Peace and Justice Committee in 1995, the program originally focused on distributing shoes and gently used coats. During the second year 783 pairs of shoes and 200 coats were distributed, yet there was a desire to reach a larger number of children and to meet more specific needs.

Over time, a well-organized, comprehensive identification and distribution system has been developed, and now every year the church gives approximately 1,000 children a new winter coat at an annual cost of $50,000. The process begins in August when elementary and middle school counselors in all seven school districts are asked to identify their students who may need a new coat. Those counselors work diligently to ensure that children in need are served.

Every identified child has a coat ordered specifically for him/her. The project is funded through donations by First Presbyterian Church members and others throughout the community. For a gift of $35.00 donors can honor a loved one, provide a gift in memory of someone, or simply have the pleasure of giving a child a new coat for the cold winter (donation link below).

On Winter Warmth Distribution Day parents and children begin lining up in by 7:00 am eager to “shop” for a new coat. Hundreds of First Presbyterian members, as well as other volunteers from throughout the community, walk each child through the aisles of coats, allowing each of them to be fitted and to select just the right style and color. It is a happy day, and almost every child proudly leaves the building dressed in style for cold weather.

The scriptures have guided this work for the past 20 years, “What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you? If a brother or sister is naked and lacks food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace, keep warm and eat your fill,’ and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? So,faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.” James 2:14-17.

Winter Warmth is a reflection of Christ’s love in the world.