Back to school shopping for a family can be daunting, but imagine shopping for 5,500 students.
The Action Center, a Lakewood-based nonprofit, does just that on an annual basis. Aided by a small army of volunteers, and a lot of corporate and individual financial support, the Action Center has been helping Jefferson County-area students have all the school supplies they need.
"It shows the power of community, Action Center Executive Director Mag Strittmatter said. "Everybody does a little bit, and a lot gets done."
The distribution happened last week, at Stevens Elementary School, 7101 W. 38th Ave. From 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. daily, for six days in a row, hundreds of families would fill the cafeteria area, and wait their turn to enter the gym, where piles upon piles of school supplies, already sorted and bagged according to grade level, waited to be claimed. Each child was also offered their choice of a new backpack, in several different colors.
Strittmatter said a generous donation from Cardel Homes made the backpacks a possibility. in previous years there was only enough funding to give each family one backpack, no matter how many children might be going to school, Strittmatter said.
That was the case for Sara Thompson of Wheat Ridge. Three years ago, she said her oldest daughter gave the little sister the one backpack. This year, there was no need for the 11th and fourth graders to choose, since received a bag.
"For us, we couldn't do it without this," Thompson said, gesturing to the distribution area. "Being a single mom is hard."
Sable Sanchez of Arvada, raising three girls in elementary school, agreed with that, saying school supply lists just kept getting longer. Without the distribution program, she said the family would have had to make some hard decisions.
"We would have had no internet for a while, and that car payment would have been tough," Sanchez said.
Oldest daughter Alexis Sanchez said it was exciting to get to pick out the colors and styles of backpack and folder she'd want.
As it turned out, each girl got to choose their favorite color for their backpack, purple, blue and pink.
Strittmatter said one of the reasons for the many great volunteers who help with the program is the realization that "it's a simple matter of circumstances between being a volunteer, or being needy.
According to Action Center organizers, the distribution actually requires two full weeks of preparation. About 700 volunteers put in 42,000 hours of work to make it possible.
"It's a wonderful spectrum of people who help out here," said Dick Krepel. The Lakewood resident also works as a client advocate for The Action Center, and has helped on more than six school supply distribution events.
The Action Center makes use of donated supplies, as well as cash donations that can be used to make discount bulk purchases from participating retailers.
The distribution program has been going on since 1999. The Action Center began using Jefferson County facilities to host the growing event sine 2007.
"It's amazing that our community supports its own like this," said Jefferson County School District Superintendent Dan McMinimee after he helped lead one family through the gauntlet of different supply stations, picking up basic supplies here, backpacks there.
"To me, it just shows it takes an entire community to make sure kids are successful in education," McMinimee said.
The superintendent said he was also happy to see other Jeffco students among the volunteers.
He pointed to one Lakewood High School student volunteer. "He probably has a thousand other things he could be doing today, but chose to come here and help."
from Lakewood Sentinel - Latest Stories http://lakewoodsentinel.comhttp://lakewoodsentinel.com/stories/Nonprofit-group-supports,234085?branding=15
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