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i t h A Bu W p o lldawg Sh Stu
program makes the holidays n e v i brigh t- dr ter fo n e r d story by Denise H. Horton (ABJ ’83, MPA ’11)
Athens children
photos by Jonathan Lee
R
egero Allen isn’t at all sure he wants to Shop With A Bulldawg. Seated on the floor of the Classic Center, surrounded by nearly 400 children from Clarke County’s 14 elementary schools, the 5-year-old is a little overwhelmed. But one thing he knows for sure—he does not want to sit at a table with girls! “I don’t like girls,” he says, with a decisive shake of his head. Kneeling beside Regero, UGA junior Refugio Lopez tries to reassure the Barnett Shoals Elementary School kindergartener that he is in for a great day.
Seated at a nearby table, junior Leena Annamraju, Lopez’s partner for the day, seems both amused and a bit concerned. As Regero and his mentors contemplate how the day will go, other children and more than 1,000 university students swirl throughout the Classic Center ballroom, which has been transformed into Andy’s toy box from the “Toy Story” movies. Sheriff Woody and Cowgirl Jessie (better known as UGA seniors Colton Fowlkes and Kelsey Schmidt) provide updates and information throughout the morning as everyone chows down on breakfast burritos and the mentors get to know the children they’ll soon accompany on an epic shopping trip. Regero and the other children chosen for 2014’s Shop With A Bulldawg (SWAB) event arrived around 8 a.m. on Dec. 6, but planning for the event began 10 months before when senior Elizabeth Howard was chosen as executive director, senior Shannon O’Keefe assumed the position of event planning director, and SWAB’s executive board settled on the “Toy Story” theme.
UGA senior Kelsey Schmidt (right) interviews one of the children chosen to participate in Shop With A Bulldawg Dec. 6. The theme of the event was Andy’s toy box, based on the “Toy Story” movies; Schmidt, who graduated in December, is dressed as Cowgirl Jessie.
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Howard’s involvement dates back to her freshman year, when she signed on to be a SWAB mentor. Normally that involves being paired with another university student and accompanying an elementary school student to Target to shop for $100 worth of clothing and toys, which they then wrap for the children to take home and put under their Christmas tree. But Howard’s freshman year was a bit different. “I didn’t get a kid, and my partner didn’t show,” she says. “But there were some kids there who had an 11-month-old sibling with them, and I was asked if I would buy things for the baby. I remember the mom saying, ‘We need diapers.’ It had really never occurred to me that there were families who couldn’t afford diapers, so I spent $70 on diapers!” Rather than being disappointed by the experience, Howard was even more energized by the program’s ability to benefit underprivileged children. As a sophomore she was chosen for SWAB’s general committee; though she wasn’t a mentor, she still remembers speaking with a little boy who’d purchased a Barbie doll. “When I asked him about it, he said, ‘It’s for my sister,’” she recalls. “The selflessness of that child; I had a lump in my throat.”