The Socially Responsible Sweatshop of Kent is led by a board of SRS Members: Mary Ann Kasper, Jennifer Wang, Linda Seeman, Jill Hazelton, Heidi Weisel, and Sandy Brotje; and operated by about eighty volunteers ranging in age from high school to well-retired. Please consider joining the SRS if you know how to sew. We have regular workshop hours where you can work in the shop, or you can pick up projects to work on at home. There are always sewing tasks which range from easy to advanced that need to be done.

The SRS of Kent started out as just one well-known community activist trying to figure out how to help low-income area residents stretch their food budget. Mary Ann Kasper was helping former market manager, Kelly Hambly, check in clients who wanted to use the state’s voucher program to buy vegetables and fruits at the market. “But what I couldn’t get my head around was that these people really, really could use more than the $7 the state gives them per month,” Kasper said. Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) participants get only $7 a month to use for fruits and vegetables. Also, in Kent City Schools, nearly half the students qualify for free or reduced meals—a barometer of poverty nationally. Kasper listened as people approached the market table and figured out that it was hard, not just financially, but emotionally for individuals or families to come to the desk to use their card. “We want everyone to feel just great about buying good food and wanted to help them get more,” Kasper said. At the start, it was just a little hand-sewn bag Kasper or her co-founder Jennifer Wang, handed to the family or person to keep their wooden “tokens” in, week-to-week. Just that little offering and a smile had the clients coming back, knowing they were welcomed,” Kasper said. “We knew right from the start, this is something we can do week-to-week to help fight poverty right here in Kent and in the area. Over a few months in the summer of 2013, Kasper—and now a growing group—birthed the Socially Responsible Sweatshop of Kent, designed to recycle unwanted fabric into items that could be sold locally, to individuals and to area shops.