A coat against the cold

Sebastopol resident Sarah Pratt runs the Redwood Gospel Mission's winter coat program, which gives away thousands of coats each year to the poor in Sonoma County

Sarah Pratt has run the Gospel Mission’s coat program since 2019.

With winter settling in and nighttime temperatures dipping down into the 30s, a lot of people are pulling their winter coats out of the closet and bundling up for the season. Not everyone is so lucky, however. Coats are expensive.

That’s where the Redwood Gospel Mission’s winter coat program comes in. Every year, the Gospel Mission in Santa Rosa gives away thousands of winter coats (and scarves and gloves) to the needy in Sonoma County—both to the homeless and to those who simply can’t afford to buy coats for themselves and their families.

The woman in charge of this gargantuan effort is Sebastopol resident Sarah Pratt, who has run the mission’s coat program since 2019. Pratt, who has a degree in computer science from Mt. Holyoke, is a housemate of former Sebastopol mayor Una Glass (and, in the interests of disclosure, a friend of mine). A devout Catholic, she takes seriously the Church’s command to minister to the poor—both materially and spiritually.

“I’m really good at organization,” she said, “And they needed somebody that would be able to manage a large number of volunteers. It takes about 240 volunteers each year to get this coat section done. We give away four to five thousand coats a year in this ministry.”

The Gospel Mission has three outreach events that include a coat giveaway each year.

“The biggest is our Thanksgiving feast, which is at the Santa Rosa fairgrounds. We served a Thanksgiving meal to 5,000 people this year,” she said. “Our Christmas event is more intimate. It’s at our mission on Sixth Street, and people come in and get a warm meal, and they get a haircut and their feet washed, and then we offer coats. We give away about 300 coats there during Christmas. The third event, which is usually on Santa Rosa Square, happens on Easter Day itself.”

Pratt said the coat giveaways are about more than just a coat.

“We’re using the coat as an opportunity to get to know people,” she said. “That’s what’s especially beautiful about the Christmas and the Easter events, because it’s such a small number of people, usually 200 to 300 receiving a coat, we can have a longer conversation with them when they choose it. And sometimes that’s the start of something a lot bigger. So it’s the start of a connection to a new place to live, a connection to a job, a connection to sobriety resources.”

But Pratt—and others at the Gospel Mission—believe strongly that providing material help to the poor is not enough.

“We are evangelical, and we really believe very strongly that we’re not just giving away things, we’re giving away the gospel message,” Pratt said. “So in every single coat pocket, there is a gospel message.” (This year dozens of volunteers hand-wrote passages from the bible to be tucked into coat pockets.)

Undoubtedly, many of these get ignored, but sometimes they hit home, Pratt said.

“I had this man come in during COVID times—probably 2021. He came in, and he pulled out that message, and he looked at me and started crying. My volunteer, Doug, came up to him and said, “How are you doing, sir?” And he started talking to Doug, and he said ‘I was going to kill myself today. And then I pulled this message out of the pocket,’ and so he says, ‘I want to stay here and talk to you some more.’ So, I mean, these messages really have an effect upon people.”

Pratt also runs a prayer ministry at the Gospel Mission, where the homeless can submit their prayers and have people pray for them. “I lead a prayer team. We have about 20 people on the team, and about 10 people show up to these meetings once a month. We have people who write to us from the mission, whether they’re staff, volunteers or people in our homeless shelter, right? And they’ll ask for prayer. They’re often not connected with a church yet at that stage in their recovery, so they don’t have a church to pray for them. So we do that.”

Coats for Christmas

Pratt is still collecting coats for the Christmas giveaway. She will be placing a collection box at the Sebastopol Times office at 524 S. Main St. in Sebastopol, across the street and a few doors down from A&M Barbecue. The last day to drop them off is Friday, Dec. 20.

What kind of coats is Pratt looking for?

“We desperately need sizes XL and above,” she said. “It’s not because homeless people are bigger than we are. Homeless people, they want to protect their stuff and they often have a lot of things that need to go under those coats. Also, particularly for women, so they can be disguised on the street, they often want a man’s coat. So we’re desperately in need of men’s XL and above,” she said.

She does not need women’s size medium coats, because she said she always has a superfuity of these.

Interestingly, Pratt also said there’s a need for coats for boys. She says families tend to buy more clothes for girls—including coats—but that this isn’t true for boys.

She’s also looking for warm hats and winter scarves and gloves. “The warmer gloves, like ski gloves, are better. We don’t get a lot of those, and that’s what the homeless would really like. Those cheap, Dollar Store gloves are not terribly useful for keeping people warm.”

Drop off clean, new or gently used coats and winter accessories at the Sebastopol Times, 524 S. Main Street, Sebastopol. There is a donation box on the front porch.