Elmer’s (yes, the glue people) have put together a great campaign to help out kids whose families may not have the resources to provide a full slate of school supplies for the coming year. The idea is simple: put together a backpack full of school supplies and donate it to a student in need. For most families, this is pretty easy to do. When shopping for your own kids, just pick up an extra set of each item and you’ve got it done. For those who may not be doing back to school shopping as a matter of course, it’s still an easy thing to do. Most stores have everything you need right in the same area, and the cost is reasonable.
For our family, this project was really more of the latter. We homeschool our kids on a year-round schedule, so we really don’t have a “back to school” time on the calendar, and we certainly don’t need backpacks! For us, then, we picked up a few things we needed, but we were able to focus most of our effort on shopping for the items to donate. You can check out the whole experience at Whrrl.
There have been times where our family was hard-pressed to make ends meet, and the generosity of anonymous strangers has made an incalculable difference. If you have the opportunity, whether you have reason to go back-to-school shopping or not, pick up a backpack full of supplies for a student in need. You’ll be glad you bagged it forward.
