Brentwood Resident Helps Battered Women and Children

What happens when a small charity needs to raise money to help people who really cannot help themselves? It is often difficult to raise the money or the resources; it is even more difficult in the current economic climate. In hard times, charities face even greater needs in the communities they serve—and they have to meet those needs with fewer resources.

That is where Community Productions, Inc. comes in. Community Productions, Inc. links charities and resources together, “to leverage fund raising to produce profitable events and activities on behalf of local charities that provide urgent services to individuals and families in immediate distress,” according to its mission statement.

Voila! The Spring Cleaning - ClothesOut Clothing Exchange is here.

The project is the brainchild of Brentwood Resident Gary Avrech, owner of Go Graphic and Printing in Brentwood. He is also the president of Community Productions, Inc., the non-profit he founded in 2008.

Avrech is a 50-something local guy who grew up in Westwood in the 1960’s and 70’s, during the civil rights era. A lot of people participated in the socially conscious movement when they were young, but most moved on with family and business concerns. Social consciousness took a back burner. Avrech, however, has made helping others kind of his mission in life.

And that is how Gary Avrech has fun; being of service to the community. He lives and breathes his belief in service and he creates events that he enjoys. He flashes a dimpled smile as he talks about his work, telling Patch how excited he is about one such event and the musicians he lined up.

Now this project is helping battered women and their children at Sojourn, a project of the Ocean Park Community Center in Santa Monica (OPCC). Sojourn provides a laundry list of services to women who find themselves in that situation.

At Sojourn, battered women can find support services that include temporary and immediate housing for themselves and their children; school clothes and supplies for their children; awareness and education services for parenting, spouses and victims; counseling and legal services and social services to help women to leave domestic violence behind them and begin a new life.

OPCC is an extraordinary organization that extends outreach on dozens of levels to individuals suffering from homelessness, domestic violence, poverty, mental illness, displacement and addiction. Sojourn is one of the many ways that OPCC extends a hand to our most fragile members in the community at their time of need.

ClothesOut, then, is a small opportunity to contribute from our abundance and recycle gently used women’s clothing, shoes and accessories and children’s clothing for a good cause. It is also a great opportunity to pick up some “new” threads for a very reasonable price and do something to help battered women and their kids at Sojourn.

People can donate their shoes, handbags, accessories and costume jewelry as well. Those items will be gathered and displayed at the Church in Ocean Park. Then there is a clothing exchange. For $20, participants receive a large plastic bag they can fill up to the top. It’s only $10 more for each additional bag. One hundred percent of the proceeds and any leftover clothing will be donated to Sojourn. 

The clothing could provide women at Sojourn and other facilities the opportunity to rebuild shattered egos and lost dignity, and a means to re-enter a world they had left behind on the streets.

The ClothesOut Clothing Exchange is only a glimpse. Avrech started Community Productions, Inc., a 501 (c)(3), a couple of years ago to answer the need for urgent services to help individuals and families in need.

For the ClothesOut, Community Productions has partnered with The Church in Ocean Park and their group, Kickass Drinking Volunteer Benefactors Society (KDVBS), to provide a much-needed service for battered women and their children who have seen far too much of the dark side of humanity.

Through his organization, Avrech pairs with many organizations throughout the community, depending on where the immediate needs arise. Community Productions functions to pool complimentary organizations to get the job done.

“Community Productions is all-volunteer,” said Avrech. “We help other local charities that help people in distress, like food banks and shelters.”

Avrech also serves on the board of the Santa Monica Bay Human Relations Council and the Martin Luther King, Jr. Westside Coalition. He organizes community events, most recently, the 6th Annual Unity Resource Festival, celebrating Santa Monica’s many cultures through music, dance and food.  

In January the MLK Westside Coalition, the City of Santa Monica, the Santa Monica Symphony Orchestra, City-TV, the Rand Corporation, Soka Gakkai International and Santa Monica College participated in a 3-day celebration in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. and his teachings. This month, besides the ClothesOut event, Avrech helped organize the 6th Annual Unity Resource Festival, celebrating Santa Monica’s many diverse cultures through music, dance and food.

Events like the MLK celebration and the Unity Festival promote many non-profits that support the community by creating a presence and distributing information about their organizations, promoting charitable institutions through synergistic partnership and group participation.

Avrech is quietly passionate about what he does. “I spent so much time on MLK and the Human Rights Council that my business lost money,” he said. “But I’m happy with the work we did.”

Community members can drop off clothing at the Church at Ocean Park on Saturday 12-2 p.m. and Sunday 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. For Brentwood residents, additional local drop offs can be arranged by appointment by calling Gary Avrech at 310-207-4500.

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