Local woman starts T-shirt sale to help Food Cupboard

Written by Claire Lowe Saturday, December 22, 2012 01:00 am

OCEAN CITY — After surviving Hurricane Sandy relatively unscathed, Ocean City resident Jackie Dougherty decided she wanted to help others that weren’t so fortunate.

The West Chester, Pa. native started volunteering at the Ocean City Food Cupboard, and also made several donations to the Ecumenical Council, but felt she could still do more.

A conversation with a friend of Dougherty’s, Kimberly Newsome of Rumson (Monmouth County), led her to her current fundraising effort for the Food Cupboard: a T-shirt sale.

“Kimberly called me because of being in Ocean City, and she wanted to know how I made out with the storm, and then she told me what she was doing in her own town,” Dougherty explained.

Newsome was selling shirts, which say, “Rising from the Storm 2012” on the front, and on the back of them is a phoenix, to raise funds for recovery in Rumson.

Dougherty liked the idea so much that she asked the Ecumenical Council of Ocean City, which operates the Food Cupboard and Clothes Closet, if she could sell them to raise funds for the nonprofit organization. They agreed.

So Newsome provided Dougherty with the shirts, and Dougherty went around to several businesses in Ocean City, explaining her cause and asking if they would sell the shirts.

“I just saw all the need for the Food Cupboard,” Dougherty said, adding she is “trying to bring a little bit of positive brightness to the situation.”

Newsome and Dougherty met two years ago in Red Bank. Both women are frequent vendors at farmers markets and bazaars around the state.

“I sell balsamic vinegars and olive oils at different markets and events. Kim has her own clothing line,” said Dougherty, owner of City2Shore Gourmet.

Dougherty’s own merchandise, stored in a storage unit locally, was destroyed in the storm.

“It was my business that took more of a hit than my house. We were really blessed at my house,” she said. “I’m still going through all those things. I had to write off a lot of product and I lost my way of earning a living.

“God is good and we’re OK, and that’s the more important thing.”

Dougherty said that after Sandy, many of her neighbors were going to the Food Cupboard to get supplies, so they could begin clean up in their homes. She went to volunteer at the Tabernacle shortly after she got her home situated and saw the devastation.

“The things that I lost were minimal compared to what other people lost,” she said.

“There’s so many people who have it worse than me.”

The T-shirts are available in men’s and women’s sizes, short and long sleeve, for $25 at Boyar’s, OC Local Gym, Gabrielle and Co. and 7th Street Surf Shop on Asbury Avenue.

Sixty percent of the proceeds from the sale go to the Food Cupboard, the other 40 percent go to the purchase of the T-shirts, Dougherty said.

“I think the Food Cupboard takes care of a lot of the people that have nothing to begin with,” she said. “The Food Cupboard is a non profit organization and I’m just trying to do something for them.”