Pell Frischmann Volunteers with Uniform Exchange

Last week, eight volunteers from our Wakefield office spent a day supporting Uniform Exchange, an inspiring organisation based in Huddersfield, Kirklees. The charity collects, sorts and redistributes donations of high-quality school uniforms to families in need at no cost, supporting all 182 schools across the district, while promoting environmental sustainability through textile reuse and recycling.

In the last year, Uniform Exchange reached its highest service scale yet, providing free school uniforms to over 11,000 children, all while continuing to operate as a zero-waste, circular economy charity delivering measurable environmental impact.

Our volunteers worked alongside the Uniform Exchange team, helping to empty donation bags, sort through items, check each one for quality, and fold and tag them, ready for redistribution.

Rosie Walker, Transport Planner, said:

A huge thank you to everyone at Uniform Exchange for welcoming us, showing us the ropes, and accommodating our team throughout the day – we thoroughly enjoyed it! It was fantastic to play a small part in supporting such an important organisation and the invaluable work they do for local families.

Kate Nicholls, our Wakefield Social Value Champion, said:

The volunteering day was extremely insightful. You don’t often think about what happens after you drop items off at the clothing bins – the quality checking and organisation that goes into giving clothes a new home is quite a process! The workers at Uniform Exchange were very appreciative of our work, saying we had completed multiple days of work in one day, clearing over 20 wheelie bins worth of items. Everyone seemed to really enjoy the day, with many of us keen to help out again!

Thanks to Uniform Exchange and everyone’s efforts on the day, more children across Kirklees can now attend school with confidence, dignity and equality, directly contributing to Uniform Exchange’s wider mission to make ‘second-hand’ the first choice and to address financial hardship and environmental waste simultaneously.