Back to School Bonanza
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By Shelli Ellis, Chair his year, we opened our hearts and hands to help serve the youth of our community with our first annual Back To School Bonanza. In the past, we have helped children through our annual backpack drive, but this year our goal was to reach at least 1,400 qualified school-aged children with everything they needed to be ready for school, from a backpack to immunizations to haircuts. It takes more than one organization to make something like this happen, so we began looking for others to come along side us. The community was ready and waiting to help. First United Methodist Church graciously volunteered the use of their facility, provided health kits for the children and had at least 50 additional volunteers working at the event. Buckner Children’s and Family Services extended their hand to help by pre-screening families for seven weeks prior to the event and also having staff members screening the day of the event. Next, The Children’s Clinic and Angelina Pediatrics volunteered to coordinate and give all of the immunizations necessary. In addition to these community partners, we had at least 20 hairdressers and barbers volunteering their services throughout the day, 16 sustainers helping with vision screening and in other support areas and 4 dentists managing the dental screenings. Early on, our goal was to provide 1,000 backpacks filled with supplies; however, Buckner notified us days before the event that 863 children had already been pre-screened. At that point, a call to our FUMC liaison, Jim Dunbar and backpack chair, Anna Wyatt was made to come up with a new plan. In a short 15 minute conversation we came up with 400 additional backpacks between the church and extra backpacks the League had. The next two hours were spent with John Jerke at Office Depot, filling up every cart they had with additional school supplies! The journey was just beginning… With help from several Panther Pride Drill Team members, FUMC members, provisionals, league members, and several league children we began the daunting task of stuffing 1,400 backpacks with school supplies! The church had a delicious breakfast ready at 5:00am and numerous volunteers scattered across the campus helping with crowd control. Little did we know that by 7:30am the crowd would be down the walkway, around the corner of the gym and all the way to the road! The fellowship hall was filled with volunteers and Pastor Sholars led us in prayer before opening the doors to the community, to what would be a profound and very humbling experience for each one of us. The haircut station seemed to be the most popular of the day. Next, the children were able to have a dental screening by Drs. Art Jordan, Ken Handley, Tom Croley and Andy McPhillips and receive a free toothbrush kit, donated by Dr. Fred & Lisa Griffin. Vision screening and immunizations were the next station, before they picked up their backpack and smiled all the way out the door! With only a few small glitches to work out throughout the day, we were
6 September 2011
able to serve almost 1,300 children. With the additional backpacks left, we were able divide them between several local schools, including Zavalla, Hudson, LMS, Herty, Burley, Slack, Anderson, Garrett, Dunbar, and Brandon. I am truly humbled to have been able to help coordinate this year’s Back to School Bonanza and could not have done it without having been blessed with such a diligent, hard-working committee, which included: Tammi Axleson, Rhonda Cates (Vision Chair), Suzy Childers, Tamara Day, Kimberly Doyle, Liz Durrett, Emily Grimes, Stephanie Gustafson, Susan Harris (Co-Chair), Tracy Jerke, Tina McDonald (Immunizations Chair), Heather Robertson (Dental Chair), Shanelle Stewart, Kathi White (Haircut Chair), Anna Wyatt (Backpack/SS Chair) and two extras … Jennifer Webster & Marcy Weibe. From our very first meeting in early June until the day of the event, everyone worked seamlessly toward the goal … to help make the life of a child in need a little bit better! A smile is worth a thousand words and we were able to see at least 1,263 smiles that day! Thank you, thank you to everyone (and those that I may have forgotten to mention) that helped make this year’s Back to School Bonanza a success!
Shelli Ellis, Chair
JLL Back to School Bonanza