Annual Fall Backpack Drive for Homeless Children Now Underway
HOPEsudbury and First Parish of Sudbury are collecting backpacks and school supplies for homeless children living at Mary’s Place and Sandra’s Lodge in Waltham and Sudbury youth.
Donations of new or gently-used backpacks, and all new school supplies, such as pens, pencils, erasers, paper, rulers, notepads, markers, binders, tape, scissors, pencil cases, calculators, and other new supplies are gratefully accepted.
Starting on August 13th through September 30th donation bins will be located conveniently at First Parish of Sudbury (327 Concord Road), the Grange Hall ( 326 Concord Road), the Sudbury Town Flynn Building ( 278 Old Sudbury Road -Route 27), and the Goodnow Library (through Sept 14th only).
This year’s backpack drive is off to a great start thanks to 8-year old Rachel Turkington, a student at Haynes Elementary School, who collected backpacks rather than gifts at her June birthday party and donated them to HOPEsudbury’s annual drive.
“We hope others will be inspired by Rachel’s generous example and help kids in shelters get a fresh start to their school year,” said Carole Ann Baer, who is in her tenth year of conducting this drive for HOPEsudbury in partnership with the Faith in Action Team at First Parish of Sudbury.
For more information on the backpack drive, call Carole Ann Baer at 978-443-6684.
Jill Stansky
1:14 pm on Friday, September 28, 2012
In total our HOPEsudbury drive collected an unbelievable 99 backpacks (and this doesn't even include what First Parish,our drive partner, collected). These backpacks and school supplies came from the Goodnow Library, Sudbury Grange and the Flynn Building drop-off sites. We also collected backpacks and school supplies from at least 3 children's birthday parties, Staples donations via Ana Schwartz and from Shilpa Rastogi and the Sudbury Family Network.
These combined efforts made this one of our most successful backpack drives ever. We have been told by one of the staff at the shelter that these backpacks get distributed all year long as new families come in to various programs during the school year. Many families enter the shelter system with absolutely nothing in hand.
Thank you to the many generous Sudbury families who made donations to the drive.