Each child deserves to start the school year ready to learn, with the tools they need for academic success.
The Sharing Shelf launched its 12th annual Backpacks to School initiative this week to provide new backpacks filled with grade appropriate school supplies to children and teens living in poverty in Westchester County. Our goal – to fill and distribute 1,500 backpacks. Each backpack will be matched with an individual child or teen through area schools, government agencies and grassroots nonprofits serving low-income families. We are the primary source of backpacks for children receiving services from Westchester County’s Department of Social Services.
Our backpacks are filled with the essentials a student needs – from composition books, pencils, erasers, folders, scissors, crayons, markers and colored pencils for elementary school to pens, highlighters, binders, 3 subject notebooks, filler paper, graph paper and calculators for high school.
We need your help! The Sharing Shelf ordered the supplies and new backpacks. Now we need your financial support and volunteerism to help cover the cost of supplies and to join our efforts to fill the backpacks later this summer. We can fill a new backpack with the supplies a child or teen needs for $30.
Click here to donate a backpack to a child or teen.
Plan ahead and join us in our warehouse throughout July to prepare and save the date for our Community Packing Day on Saturday, August 13th from 10am -12pm. There is a suggested donation of a new backpack or $30 per person to attend. Distribution begins on Tuesday, August 23rd and volunteers will be needed August 23 -25 and August 29-30-31st. To express interest in volunteering, fill out our volunteer questionnaire.
Get your company involved! Join our team of sponsors then join us on Monday, August 22nd for our Sponsor Packing Day to pack backpacks. Visit our website for more information.
Questions? Contact Deborah Blatt, our Executive Director, at dblatt@sharingshelf.org
