PACK THE BACKPACKS

Good morning, good morning, good morning. Welcome, welcome, welcome.

It is time now for our community connection right here on K one, the one you just brought you by Arnoll Moore in the camp at funeral home. And it is always great. Is he familiar faces today? We've got our friends from pack to backpacks. We got Cindy and Pat both in here today popping yellow mine. Goodness sakes, we can use some Sunshine school bunch.

Of yellow for pack the backpacks.

And wow, a lot going this is This is crunch time, isn't it.

We just finished crunch time.

Wow, So maybe that's why we were kind of moving slow, coming.

Back here very slowly.

It is a sprint weekend.

I actually a sprint week yes, calling it because we're spreading from place to place to make it happen.

Pat and I feel like we are getting a little old and we would really like to turn some of the rains over to some younger people. So if some younger people are listening to this and they would love to get involved and pack the backpacks, we would love to hear from them.

Before we get the folks signing up. Let's tell us what this is all about. Tell us what we do well.

Actually, what we do is provide specific school supplies, a full backpack of everything by school, by grade, by teacher, by gender.

Not by teacher.

We do it by a group of teachers by grade.

Bye.

Great, all the supplies that are asked for for a particular school year, and they get a new backpackage year full of all of the supplies that they need so that they are equipped to begin a new year and be successful.

Well, that's great.

And the only reason I say not by teacher is because every now and then, when students go into the classroom, the teacher will ask them to bring a few other supplies that are specific just to them, and we cannot get that pacific pack said.

We do a lot as it is you heavy lifting, yea, the heavy lifting.

Yes, And this year we packed two thousand and six hundred and nine backpacks, and we did about one hundred and fifty three late backpacks.

But Pats, you want to tell them about the late backpack.

Well, actually, when if someone is unable to sign up online or if they forget the date, you know, after, then we provide what we call generic supplies that not necessarily.

With the backpack.

We have a way to a back or sack to give them so that they are prepared as well. But it's not specific grade by school of grade. It's just a generic.

We give them what we have.

We don't go out and buy things for the generic backpacks.

So this is you know, okay, here you go, and we did.

As Cindy said, we had one hundred and fifty three people that walked in.

Either I'm just moving to town.

Or I forgot, or I have another person that's going to be living with me, or I changed schools and I didn't do it, or this is the.

First time I found myself in this situation.

And unfortunately that seems to have happened quite a bit this year. We've had quite a few families that this is their first time to request back.

Tax, and you know, if it's your first time, you don't know how it works. And then you ask all the questions in the world, and sometimes you just got to go through the fire a little bit. Now you have an assembly line once we do the shopping, and I understand it.

We've covered this before. The shopping never stops.

This shopping never.

As a matter of fact, during spent weekend, I happened to be at Walmart doing something for the day, and school supplies had already started being reduced in prices, it's time to get them.

We ask people all the time, you know, to please donate supplies to us, and we're really fortunate we have a couple of groups and a lot of churches are deciding they choose a product a month that we will ask for, let's say black markers, and so all the churches that are involved give us black markers and that

Lot this pasture.

Mike, I'm not sure.

How many churches were involved, five or six. Five or six churches stepped up this year. And we also have a collection been at the lobby at RSU that anybody at any time can drop off supplies there as well.

You'd be surprised how many learners know what that's like and they say, hey, look I got an.

Extra give that exactly and it works out really well.

And the Brewing Wrestling team helped us move supplies from our storage at r Sue to Saint Luke's, which was a tremendous help because they can lift. In fact, sometimes I would go, are you sure you can lift that much?

Watch hang on aid to watch this.

Exactly, it's right.

So we were there with cool water and encouragement.

We had some snacks, well we didn't so much.

Of a blur, and Pat usually buys snacks and things, so that that really helps. And the Lighthouse, we go out there and some of their volunteers they will come help us, and we do like to pay them because we know that they're out there trying to have a little bit of spending money or doing something, trying to better themselves. And so that has helped. And then the Women's Golf League out at Hillcrest they provided us with this is unbelievable fifty nine calculators, scientific calculators.

Amazing.

Yeah, so still still aren't cheap.

Now now these at least I thought.

Maybe since I was in grade school when the first came out in like fourth or fifth grade, that maybe the price would come down.

Well, these aren't the graphing calculators, but they are scientific and they're you know, up to twenty dollars each and so it was just a tremendous help.

Wow. Now let's get into how folks can help. First of all, we need volunteers.

We need volunteers, and those volunteers, as we said, because we do purchase supplies all year, we have an inventory storage is that RSU are the RSU building on the second floor, and they can contact us at packthe Backpacks dot org if anybody's interested in helping, because we always have prob that need to be inventory, products that need to be stored, those kinds of things that we do all year in preparation of the next year, spent weekend and so yeah, they can volunteer that way as well.

We were so fortunate with our volunteers this year. We had so many people that came Thursday night, Friday morning, Friday afternoon, Saturday morning that we finished early each time.

Nice.

They were fantastic. We could not do it without these people in the community.

Did you see a lot of new faces this time around?

We actually did.

Saw a number and we have the opportunity we used sign up genius and say for this block of time, we may need forty people, yes, and we'd get sixty because maybe maybe forty would sign up but another twenty would just come and volunteer.

What happened. You gave them a nice compliment, you said, sign up genius.

Yeah, that's true.

Next thing you people showed up.

And you know, it's interesting is so many parents are getting their children to be volunteers at an early age, and the children really seem to enjoy it. And it's fantastic to see those kids out there working and finding out what it is like to be a part of a community.

You know, when you give a youngster a meaningful task, absolutely it means the world to them because they get that real good sense of internal pride.

It's not like beat your chest pride.

It's like, wow, I did that exactly, that's exactly right.

Accomplishment.

Yes, yes, man, this is great and this helps the kids that are in need all throughout Washington County. Yes, so all the Washington County public schools are can fuddel into.

This, that's true.

Yes, And we are having a fundraiser coming up. We were going to have it on a Saturday, but that interfered with the big event with Big Brothers and Big Sisters, so we changed the date to October twenty fifth, and it will be Bingo night at Saint Luke's Nice.

All right, Yeah, what's the cost to get into the game? You know what I'm saying.

It used to be ten dollars and I think we'd probably keep it the same. I think some places charge ten dollars in advance, twelve dollars.

At the door. So we're we're in discussion on that.

Should we have folks to check out your Facebook page for prepdates on that?

Definitely, definitely do that, but sooner than that.

We have a fundraiser restaurant fundraiser Mazios on the seventeenth Sunday afternoon from four to eight and all you have to do is go and eat pizza, Grab everybody off the street and take a load with you. Just be sure to tell them that you are eating on behalf of pack the backpacks.

Can they credit you?

We get a percentage of the sales for the day. Yes, nice, Yes, wonderful.

Yeah, that's great. Anything that we can do to earn some money help, right.

Large pizza solid our.

Yes.

Yes, As Simmy said, we have a number of smaller fundraisers. Because we're not a United Way agency, we don't have corporate funding for what we do. We depend upon these types of breakfast pancake breakfast at the Masonic Lodge or the Knights of Columbus at Saint John's. They are very very supportive of what we do and are always looking for a slot to slaught us in to say, hey, we would you like to come and serve?

And I know those nights they're always looking for to cook.

They are and they're good and they're good.

You know.

We always like to mention that all of us are volunteers.

We have no paid employees and so no administrative cost, no administrative costs. The only thing we have to pay us rent and that that we have to have a place to put the supplies or I don't know what we would do.

So that is your overhead, just the rent that's overheaded. Yes, wow, this is wonderful. And how do people get a.

Hold of you in order to try to fill in these slots for volunteers and other ways to help maybe.

Even be a shot.

Well at packd Backpacks dot org and.

They can contact us from our Facebook page.

And I think the Facebook page is Washington County School Supply Drive.

It is, but there is on that page the website. Yes, the website is Washington County School supply drive.

All right, well you just take it into Google's we'll find it.

Oh and if they go on Facebook and look it up, they will find it.

Well, this is great, this is good news. I want you to first of all, get some rests.

We were just saying, this is early for I told Pat, I said, I cannot believe I am not a morning person. I don't usually make any type of plans before nine o'clock since I retired. And I said, I cannot believe you talked me into coming here at eight fifteen in the morning.

To but for pack the backpacks. We'll make the effort.

Yeah, go for a climber.

My goodness, say this is great. Well, good luck to you and folks. Remember what's the special night from Osio's again.

On the seventeenth Sunday afternoon after.

Four to eight, and then the Bingo.

Night is October twenty fifth.

October twenty fifth.

Saint Luke's Cindy was saying that that's going to be at St.

Lukes.

One of the other things I really would like to give special kudos to Saint Lukes. They let us virtually take over their church. While this is going.

On a week in. Yes, we are so appreciative of Saint Rights.

We've been doing it with them for over twenty years.

Oh yes, Oh they're fantastic. We could not do this without saying Luke's Wow.

What a great partnership.

So father Nick, thank you.

There you go and he packed backpacks.

What he did, he did well, he pa.

He had a little fun too, he did. Thank you for being with us today, and folks, thank you for watching and listening right here on K one, the one you trust.

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