BERLIN, Wis. — A Fox Valley-area organization is looking out for families trying to make ends meet during challenging economic times.

Community Clothes Closet provides new and gently used clothes to families and helps with academic supplies as the start of school nears.

Jessica Pfister works with the organization and knows how much a new shirt means to a person in need.

“It really builds confidence,” Pfister said. “It identifies who you are as an individual.”

She said this organization services the entire state several times throughout the year.

“We’re going to provide warm clothing,” she said. “We’re also going to be providing winter coats for the parents.”

She said the need has been quite high now that pandemic help has disappeared.

“What we’re seeing is they’re not able to afford, you know, clothing is clothing isn’t always necessarily considered a basic need,” Pfister said.

She said she has noticed various families don’t have a way to access these clothes.

“We knew that transportation barrier was big for a lot of our clients to get to us and a lot of them couldn’t shop with us because of that,” Pfister said.

So, with a box truck, executive director Lisa Jones said they’ve brought the closet to the community. She said so families are going through tight times.

“We actually had a mom come in recently. She has three young kids under the age of eight. She’s driving up from Sheboygan and living in her car right now with her kids,” Jones said. “She cannot find affordable housing and so really struggling. She’s on a waiting list to get into the homeless shelter. So what we were able to do was set her up with clothing so her kids can start school with clean clothing.”

She said this story is sadly becoming too common as inflation hits many Wisconsin families. She said the number of households they have serviced has soared from 3,000.

“Right now, we’re serving a record number of individuals, actually over 8,000 right now,” Jones said.

With so many families in need — with little or no money for new clothes — Pfister said their organization has worked to eliminate that hurdle.

“Families are welcome to shop with us for free. And we started out just letting kids shop and now we let the entire family shop for us,” she said. “It really helps alleviate that, you know, that barrier of cost.”

The nonprofit is working to provide free clothes to fill an important need while assisting those living paycheck to paycheck.