In the past twelve years, running and growing Hallyboy Foundation as a charity providing backpacks filled with school supplies to children attending Title I (poverty level) elementary schools, as well as furnishing thousands of library books to those same students, I have been privileged to interact with people in a way that would not have occurred had I not been part of this organization.
Many parents head for stores like Dollar Tree to pick up as many of the necessary school items as possible at the lowest possible prices, and to be honest, until Hallyboy was able to acquire enough donations to be able to order things like backpacks on a wholesale basis, Dollar Tree, Target and Walmart (starting July 5 of every year for back-to-school specials) were our staple go-to stores. My husband Richard and I joyously spend many hours traveling to and from these places, smugly returning home with multiple packages of 8 glue sticks for a dollar, spiral notebooks for 25 cents (35 cents this year – yes, inflation has hit everywhere), et cetera.
There are times, however, when scooping up a score of one-inch binders at one time can be a problem for parents shopping for one or two children who are at the same time in the particular store that we are shopping at. One such instance occurred a few years ago.
Driving the first hundred backpacks filled with supplies and library books to be delivered by volunteers to a local Title I elementary school, Richard and I stopped at Dollar Tree, one of my favorite places for back-to-school items. We headed down the aisle, and to my delight, we discovered a cache of 20 brightly colored binders, one of the items that we always include in our backpacks.
As I gleefully scooped them up, a young mother with two small school-aged boys was shushing her kids. One child was complaining that he wanted one of the binders, and now there were none left. Before I opened my mouth to offer two of my stash to them, the mom quietly told her sons, “We can’t afford that anyway. We can only get what’s on our list.”
It was then that I noticed that she had a few school supplies in her basket: 2 boxes of 8 crayons, a notebook, some pencils. She was also holding EBT coupons (food stamps) for the few items of food she had chosen.
I said, “Excuse me, ma’am, I promise I’m not some nut job, but I run a foundation that donates school supplies to children. I’m parked outside,” and I gave her the description and location of my car. “I’m checking out now. I’ll wait for you by my car and I’ll give the boys all the basics they will need for school for free.” She looked puzzled and, perhaps, a little suspicious. I hastened to reassure her. “If you aren’t happy with what I give you, you can always go back into the store to get what you originally came for.”
She fell in line behind us as we went to the cashier to pay for the binders. I then rushed to our car to pull out two backpacks, a Spiderman one for the older boy and one with cars on it for the younger. The three of them approached our vehicle with some hesitation, but when I handed each boy his goodies (and a few library books to boot), they broke into big smiles.
The mom peered into the Spiderman bag as her son excitedly unzipped it. Viewing all the supplies it held, she turned to me and said tearfully, “If it wasn’t for the virus, I’d hug your neck.” I grinned and offered her an elbow-to-elbow ‘hug’ and then watched her and her kids get into a small compact that clearly had seen better days.
These sort of chance encounters don’t only result in a feel-good moment; they are also sometimes a teaching opportunity for us at Hallyboy Foundation, with needy families being the teachers and us being the students.
A few years ago, on our backpacks-and-supplies trip to an elementary school in St. Augustine, Florida predominantly populated by the children of migrant workers, we had been informed by one of the many devoted teachers there that the students needed everything, and that any amount of any school item would be gratefully accepted and utilized. We filled our van to the brim, relying solely and completely on our side-view mirrors to keep us safe on the road. As a result of having to drive more cautiously, we spent more hours on the road to the school, flashers flashing all the way.
After depositing the items we had purchased with that year’s donations, we were engaged in a lively conversation with the school’s principal. Richard asked him, based on the supplies we brought, what else could an elementary school child, living in such economically insecure circumstances, utilize in the course of the school year.
Just as the principal was starting to answer, a young mother came into the school to register her two little girls. While they were waiting for the administrator to begin helping her with the paperwork, the younger of the two said, “Mama, when am I going to get my own toothbrush?” The mom answered quietly and evenly, “When your sister is done with hers, you’ll get it.”
We all stood there in quiet shock, as it never would have been in our worldview that children would share a toothbrush; a cost-saving measure like that would never have even been a consideration in our world. But here was a family that had to make decisions like that on a routine basis in order to survive.
It was then that we at Hallyboy realized that we had to include a modest, what we call hygiene packet in addition to all the school supplies in each backpack. It includes toothpaste, a new toothbrush, floss and a pack of tissues. In 2020 and 2021, we also included kid-size face masks and a personal-size hand sanitizer bottle, as both were in short supply at the time.
We at Hallyboy Foundation have come a long way since 2011, acquiring knowledge about not only the quality and quantity of basic school supplies needed by Title I elementary schoolchildren, but also about the personal, day-to-day struggles of families trying to make ends meet. It is our hope that greater and greater donations to HF will result in greater and greater numbers of filled backpacks, reducing the stress these families experience every day.
Comments