Downtown Boston Rotary Holds Sock Drive For Local Homeless Shelters

The Rotary Club of Downtown Boston held its first annual sock drive Wednesday for Friends of Boston’s Homeless, an organization that supports shelters in the city’s South End.

The event was held at the Cambridge office of Revolution Capital, a financial services firm. Amy Witherbee, a member of the Rotary Club who co-founded the business, spearheaded the foot-focused drive.

“We cannot raise $50,000 to build new classrooms, but what we can do is get socks,” Witherbee said, noting that the Downtown Boston chapter was one of the younger Rotary organizations.

Witherbee said she got the idea to do a sock drive after seeing a social media post on the Friends of Boston’s Homeless’ page explaining how shelters are in need of sock donations.

“Nobody donates socks, as you could imagine, so we decided to spend this year asking our members and our guests and everybody else to bring socks to everything,” she said.

Mallory McCoy, a new member of Downtown Boston Rotary, said she thought the sock drive exemplified the Rotary Club’s motto of “Service above Self.”

“I think that’s just another great example of how Rotary events tend to look towards what’s needed in the community that’s not being fulfilled, in a way that people can fill it.”

According to Witherbee, The Downtown Boston Rotary intends to hold additional events for the sock drive throughout the year.

“It sounds funny,” Witherbee said. “We’re devoting [this year] to socks, but yes! It’s a fun thing, and we’ll do some contests, you know just sort of as many socks as we can this year.”