WESTPORT–Years ago, before the deliveries to help people of Nicaragua, Paraguay and Appalachia, before volunteers began sorting clothes and household objects in his Bridgeport warehouse, Bill Evans’s charity efforts started with a box truck.

A painter by trade, the Westport resident was attending the Benedictine Grange in Redding when a request was made for a truck to gather donations for Nicaragua for a Connecticut Quest for Peace donation. That was in 1998, after the Central American country had been pounded by Hurricane Mitch. 

Evans, owner of Wm Evans Painting Co.. volunteered his 16-foot box truck.

It didn’t stop there.

“Little by little I got more committed to it,” he said recently. In 2002, he took his first trip to Nicaragua, and found the poverty more severe than he had imagined upon “seeing how important a pair of shoes was, plus clothes and tools and such.”

Indeed, it hasn’t stopped at all. In 2008, Evans became president of Connecticut Quest for Peace, a position he still holds.

The same year he first went to Nicaragua, fire struck his small shop in Bridgeport. The silver lining to that came when he rented his current space of 8,800 square feet, much more room than he needs for the painting business. It now holds boxes of clothes, plus a shop with clothes on racks, household items, games and much more to be donated.

It’s a multifaceted operation. Volunteers collect donations from Immaculate Conception Church in Eastchester, N.Y., and from the Thread Collective in Manhattan, which donates untouched samples.

The Connecticut Institute for Refugees and Immigrants (CIRI) sends people in need to the shop. The organization asked them to stock household items, so they do. Utensils, mugs, small appliances are all organized on shelves. While they call the space a shop, most stuff is given away. Those who can afford it pay a small amount, maybe $1 for a shirt.

“It’s just so nice to see when people find things that they want and it’s affordable to them,” said Mimi Canepari of Fairfield, the shop’s manager.

One regular customer, who asked to be identified only as Greg, was in luck recently when he sought footwear to replace his rubber shoes, which had holes worn in the bottoms.

“I found several pairs of shoes that will get me through the season,” he said.

The shop also has a collection of toys for children.

“No kid comes in without leaving with something,” Evans said. 

The original mission has changed. In 2018, the Nicaraguan government blocked shipping containers from entering the country, Evans said.

So the organization switched deliveries to Paraguay and to three spots in Appalachia. They found other ways to help in Nicaragua, paying for meals at schools and funding scholarships in a country where $78 per month pays for pharmacy school.

The volunteers see a variety of items come through for donation. Volunteer Binti Bana saw a dress for $400, “with the tag.” The Westport mother-daughter duo of Elsa and Amelia Morgan had found sweatshirts that had been given out at Bar and bat mitzvahs.

“These are perfectly good clothes that are going to people in need,” Elsa Morgan said.

Bana began volunteering years ago after she came in with her husband and son and found furniture. Her son came back the following Monday and reconfigured computers to assemble 10 working units, Evans said.

“I got help here and now I want to give back,” Bana said. 

After 42 years in the paint and carpentry business, Evans said he is gradually turning it over to his stepson and his stepson’s wife. That will give him more time to run the aid organization that grew to more than he had imagined at the start.

“I had no idea that it was ever going to turn into something like this,” Evans said.

Ken Valenti

^{_{A career journalist and lifelong resident of the New York City region, Ken Valenti has enjoyed decades of reporting local, regional and national news in New York and Connecticut. Topics of special interest are development, the environment, Long Island Sound and transportation. When not reporting, he’s always on the lookout for the perfect coffee shop or used book sale.}}