With pizza, popcorn and raffle prizes, volunteers and teachers at Two Rivers School in North Bend put on a event for students to shop for clothes donated by the Mount Si Food Bank on Friday, Feb. 10.

According to Kelly Coughlin, executive director of Mount Si Food Bank, the event came about due to conversations at Sallal Grange community meetings regarding support for children and teenagers in the Valley. When the idea to do a clothing drive and make it an event at Two Rivers came up, Coughlin and other community members started working.

“We started talking to all the different nonprofits and they all jumped in and said ‘this is exactly what we want to do,’” Coughlin said. “We had to get a storage unit to be able to do it, put the word out to everyone that we needed teenage clothing and we got pizzas donated from Frankie’s and Church on the Ridge.”

Along with donated pizzas, volunteers including Kristen Zuray and Tonya Guinn of the Trail Youth project and School Resource Officer Kim Stonebreaker from the Snoqualmie Police Department helped out at the event by organizing a booth for snacks and a raffle.

Sarah Marsh, Mount Si High School PTSA member and volunteer, said that any donated clothes not chosen at the Two Rivers event would be donated to Teen Closet, a Valley organization that lets teens-in-need pick out clothing donated from the community for free.

Coughlin said they had a lot of clothes to donate to Teen Closet and said the organization is looking to try more community events in the future.

“We didn’t want to interfere with the Teen Closet so we did it first and then we’ve got probably another 60 bags going over there,” she said. “I think our biggest thing is we want to let these kids know that people care about them and want to help them. We wanted to show our support so it was a big and important part for us at the Grange to do events to give to the community.”

Tonya Guinn of the Trail Youth project reaches for name from the bag of raffle entrants. (Evan Pappas/Staff Photo)

Emberly Louwien looks through some of the baskets of personal products donated for students at Two Rivers at the Feb. 10 event. (Evan Pappas/Staff Photo)

Kaden Kohnke, Makayla Haverfield, Jessi Bay and Anny Armour pose together at the clothing donation event. (Evan Pappas/Staff Photo)

One of the clothing rooms set up in Two Rivers. The clothes are categorized by size and students had the chance to browse and pick out what they liked. (Evan Pappas/Staff Photo)