School Readiness

On Tuesday we had our school readiness distribution, so this was the day that all of the families came to pick up their backpacks, goodies, and assorted clothing. We also provided each family with a voucher to the Family Dollar store and a coupon to CAP's thrift store Grateful Threadz. Thankfully, Jenny is extremely organized and everything went smoothly.

We had ninety-nine students and forty-seven families sponsored through this distribution. The distribution was supposed to start at 10am; Jenny and I arrived at 8:30 to finish putting together the last few things and there were already several families waiting outside. Eventually, after all the other volunteers arrived to man their stations, we let them start coming in, five families at a time, to begin the process...

Step #1: Check-In
This was my station. Each family was supposed to bring the letter that we sent them with the information about the distribution. The letters served as proof for who they were and provided us with their family number. After seeing the letter I would cross them off the list and explain the rest of the process. Kiara, my volunteer manager, served as our bouncer - letting the right number of families in at a time - and our bag lady.

Step #2: Clothing
The majority of our clothes were a very random assortment and, unfortunately, we did not even have very many clothes for kids. We did, however, have underwear for all sizes and at least the teens and even a few parents were able to get some new clothes. This station was kind of crazy though. Each child could get five clothing items. An underwear pack, three pairs of socks, a full "Hannah Montana" outfit, and a singular piece of other clothing all counted as one item each. Hence the confusion. At Christmas we got this giant pallet full of these "Hannah Montana" clothes and I think every county has been swimming in them since.

Step #3: Backpacks
Here we had all of the backpacks lined up in long lines according to their grade and separated between boys and girls. Joe was guarding the packs and helping each student pick out one that they liked. It was fun to see which packs the kids would like - and thankfully they seemed to like some of the packs that we had tons of!

Step #4: Hygiene Kits and Grab Bags
Jenny and I worked hard to put together bags with hygiene items for each family. We had some basic hygiene kits from Op Share that we added to - mainly soap, toothbrushes, toothpaste, etc. The grab bags consisted of a lot of random items that we had in the office that we thought kids might like. Such as books, hot cocoa, granola bars, etc...Theses were then separated out by age range and gender.

Step #5: Check-Out
This was Jenny's station. Her main responsibility was to check each family, making sure that they had everything they were supposed to get and that they didn't have anything they weren't supposed to have. She also gave each family their vouchers and coupons.

As aforesaid, everything went smoothly. We had just the right amount of help and only a few people showed up who were not signed up. It was great too because a reporter from the Mt. Vernon Signal came to do a piece on the distribution (hopefully Jenny makes it in the paper - it has been one of her goals for the year!). All in all it was a great day and hopefully a lot of children will enjoy their school year a little more because of it.

Even though the sign-ups for School Readiness were in May, we have been able to help out other families who missed the sign-ups. With school starting next week, we have been getting multiple calls each day from families who need help with school supplies, and thankfully, we have enough items left over to continue helping out.

This is Lonnie. He has been a student up at CAP's preschool, but he is about to enter Kindergarten. Although, maybe you can't see him with all that camo!