CINCINNATI — The Career Closet at Cincinnati State Career and Technical College recently experienced a major setback, and we wanted to help.
The Career Closet is a free resource that allows students to shop for professional attire, including clothes for both men and women, shoes, shirts, dresses and ties. The goal is to provide co-op students with at least two outfits per semester for interviews and jobs.
But in December, the program lost a significant portion of its inventory.
"We had a water main break which damaged about 50% of our clothes in our main location," Brian Hooten, co-op coordinator at Cincinnati State, told WCPO 9 anchor Adrian Whitsett.
The water damage forced them to throw away shirts, suits and pants that had been donated by community members.
WATCH: WCPO brings donations to the Career Closet after water damage affected their inventory
"I always like to look at it in the sense of, for students going on an interview, what would you want your kid or someone that you know to look like," Hooten said. "Some of our students just don't have the means to be able to purchase a suit or a shirt or pants or blazer."
When our inclusion group at WCPO 9 heard about the damage, we decided our MLK Day community service project would be gathering donations for the Career Closet. We delivered nine bags filled with clothes Wednesday, for a total of 15 bags collected by WCPO and Scripps.
Currently, the Career Closet told us they need men's shoes sizes 9-12, women's shoes size 6 and above, men's pants sizes 34-38, women's suits sizes 4-12, belts and button-down shirts for men in basic business colors like white and blue.
"We don't resell any of these things, but we will repurpose," Hooten said. "We will connect with Matthew 25. There are things like jeans that we just can't use, items that are just too casual. We use professional casual clothes and formal clothes to be able to help give our students the confidence that they need to do their interviews."
Adrian wants to hear from you. You can contact him here:
Hooten told us the program relies heavily on community donations, with about 80% coming from people who find it through internet searches. They also partner with corporations for donation drives.
"We're looking for more sponsorships, more corporations to be able to help out," Hooten said. "We appreciate everyone who's been able to help us at this point. We just want to continue to build that relationship."
Information about donating to the Career Closet can be found on CincinnatiState.edu, which includes instructions on where and how to donate.
This story was reported on-air by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.
