Bay Area woman’s nonprofit provides sexual violence survivors with dignity along with essentials

By Sharon Chin

A San Jose woman’s nonprofit is clothing people with warmth and comfort when they surrender their own clothes as forensic evidence in sexual abuse investigations.

Lisa Blanchard clothes people with dignity and love. She knew she’d found the right career fit after a woman told her that survivors of sexual violence give up what they’re wearing for DNA evidence.

“So if you give up all your clothes, what are you going to wear home, right?” said Blanchard. “So I remember when this woman told me this, feeling utterly horrified. Like, I felt like I immediately had to get up and change that.”

So Blanchard started The Grateful Garment Project in 2011. It was her college capstone assignment. Then it transformed into a San Jose-based nonprofit. It’s collected and given away clothing to more than 34,000 sexual abuse survivors, from infants to adults.

“Someone cares,” said Blanchard. “I want those people to know that they are not alone in that moment.”

Volunteers from The Grateful Garment Project help serve more than 100 partner agencies including hospitals and shelters in 45 California counties.

Blanchard says the most-needed items, bras, are also the least donated. The nonprofit also gives away toiletries, toys, books and backpacks.

Because of privacy concerns, Blanchard rarely meets the recipients but she did get an unexpected shout-out from Chanel Miller who was sexually assaulted in 2015 on the Stanford University campus. Miller woke up disoriented and alone in the hospital; her clothes were surrendered as evidence.

“I was left naked except for a flimsy hospital gown and my boots,” Miller said in a social media post. “If I had had to leave the hospital in that state, I imagine I would have felt completely exposed, vulnerable and humiliated.”

In her memoir, Know My Name, Miller describes choosing an outfit from The Grateful Garment Project and says she still cherishes the sweatshirt.

“It’s a shield of armor. It’s proof there’s still good in the world,” she described in her video post.

The acknowledgment touched Blanchard’s heart.

“It made me cry actually. It still makes me cry to think about it,” she said of Miller’s video. “It is a rare treasure to receive validation from an actual survivor.”

The nonprofit receives no government money and is 100% donor-funded, said Blanchard. The group recently held Its annual fundraising luncheon, DigniTea, in Cupertino.

The Grateful Garment Project also offers internships for high school and college students, honoring the nonprofit’s origins as her college assignment.

Jessica Ramirez of the Sonoma County Rape Crisis Center, Verity, noted how Blanchard went out of her way to furnish a survivor’s new apartment.

Each donated object, Ramirez noted, is tagged with a message that someone cares.

“It definitely helps them be seen,” Ramirez said. “So they know where it came from, it came from love. They truly do care and want to support survivors of sexual assault.”