The Spot: Helping Cambridge Residents in Need of Clothes
November 7, 2019
The Spot is a program located in St. Francis Church on Cambridge Street in East Cambridge that provides gently-used clothing to those in need. Created by Debbie Bonilla, the family liaison and homeless service outreach worker for the Cambridge Public School District (CPSD), the program aims to help Cambridge residents and has a wide variety of items available, from swimsuits to diapers.
In December of 2016, a 10-alarm, or very large, fire in East Cambridge displaced almost 125 people, many of whom were children in CPSD. That winter, Debbie Bonilla and Mary Grassi (the CPSD Title I coordinator) worked at City Hall distributing resources to affected families and were struck by the large number of donations available. “I had a dream—as Mary would say—to be able to take the clothing that was left and collect more from the community, and give it to families that needed it at no cost,” Bonilla said. “Working so closely with the families and seeing the need, I just wanted to donate everything to this ‘dream place’ and start helping as many families as we could.”
The Spot has given clothing and other assorted items to hundreds of families in Cambridge, Somerville, and even Boston in the years since the fire. However, since its founding, the program hasn’t gained as much attention among CRLS students as volunteers had hoped. Zhanée Cannelle Henry ’20 has volunteered at The Spot with the CRLS Interact Club, a community service organization. “I don’t feel like The Spot’s resources are being used enough by Rindge students, mainly because I don’t think it is being advertised enough—not a lot of people know about it,” Henry commented. “I see The Spot slowly making an impact on the community. I feel like there is still a lot of work to be done there before it becomes really active, but once it is done, [The Spot] will do great things.”
Maryam Dar ’20 also got involved through Interact, which has been cleaning up the facility, and, like Henry, is frustrated with how few CRLS students are utilizing The Spot’s resources. “The biggest issue is that people don’t know it exists because it was established so recently,” Dar added. “And I think it has the potential to have a really significant impact. It has been used by a lot of people so far, just not people who necessarily go to CRLS. I think it is having a pretty big impact, and I think it could have an even bigger impact.” With The Spot’s third anniversary in the near future, Bonilla and Grassi are hoping to acquire a washer, dryer, and a bigger space to house their operation. In order to expand their organization, they have submitted their idea to the City of Cambridge’s Participatory Budgeting process and are currently waiting to see if it will get approved to go on the ballot in the upcoming election. “Please vote for us,” Bonilla concluded. “We don’t deny anyone in need.”
This piece also appears in our October 2019 print edition.
