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WARREN -- The Trumbull County Family and Children First Council hosted its third annual It Suits You event Saturday at the Trumbull Metropolitan Housing Authority.
In collaboration with Cadence Care Network and the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, It Suits You is meant to give away male-oriented clothing to teenagers and young adults who otherwise can't afford dress clothes.
FCFC Director Bonnie Wilson said they hope the giveaway will "make special events more special, whether that's prom or homecoming, a wedding, a job interview, whatever it might be."
It Suits You has been an event that the First Council organizes annually, drawing in dozens of students yearly from schools all over Trumbull County and beyond.
"This is our third year doing this. We do it in the spring, we try to do it ahead of prom and graduation, and then we do it in the fall kind of ahead of homecoming," Wilson said. "I think our highest was 70 students, that was last fall, and from 26 different school districts."
Adding to this success was the amount of donations for this year's It Suit You event, with FCFC receiving many donated clothes.
"The community has been very, very generous with donations, everything that you see there was donated," Wilson said. "This time we got so many donations it was overwhelming. The generosity was absolutely overwhelming."
It Suits You fits in with the FCFC's wider purpose of providing services and resources for families and children who otherwise don't have access to them. The event was created to address a specific issue that community members raised to the FCFC.
"The mission of our Family and Children First Council is to identify needs and gaps in the community, and when we see a need we try to meet it ... We're sort of the conduit in a system of care. We work with all the various systems of care," Wilson said. "Someone had reached out to me and said, 'Hey, is there anywhere that a young man can go and get dress clothes? Because it's expensive.'"
This year's It Suits You was made possible by the FCFC's partnership with Cadence Care Network, a Niles-based nonprofit that provides therapy and behavioral counseling to teenagers and young adults.
"What we do is we help kids who are involved with our agency in transitioning into adulthood. It's ages 14 to 24 struggling with mental health, involvement in the child welfare system, whatever it might be," said Dylan Wilkerson, Cadence Care therapist and coordinator. "Just helping them prepare for becoming adults, becoming more independent in life outside of home with mom and dad."
Wilkerson said providing mental health services to teenagers and young adults is vitally important because they are in a transitional part of their lives, and mental health struggles can add to that pressure.
"It's a difficult time for a lot of individuals because not only are you in that period of time where you are trying to figure out who you are just as a person, where you kind of fit in the world, the direction that you want to go with your life and stuff like that," Wilkerson said. "If you have additional mental struggles on top of that, it just adds a little more kind of weight on the shoulders of a lot of kids."
It Suits You's giveaway of dress clothing has helped many teenagers who can't afford them, with Wilson citing this service as notably fulfilling.
"Especially when you're working one on one with these students, and when they tell you how much this means to them, to be able to come here, to be able to shop and to walk out of here with a new suit," Wilson said. "You have an opportunity to observe when the students walk in, when they walk out and their transformation."