CCS Hits 25 Years Of Providing School Supplies To Local Kids
August 6, 2020 at 1:18 a.m.
By Jackie [email protected]
The annual event has been put on by Combined Community Services for 25 years, said John Parker, director of emergency assistance.
Parker said the event usually gets about 1,000 people and they were wondering if Wednesday’s event would be a little higher due to people being off work due to the pandemic. “The line is already lined up to the road right now,” Parker said, shortly after the event started at 9 a.m.
Tools For School is “to supply needed items to kids that may not have the financial means to easily buy them themselves for school,” Parker said. Some of the items given away were notebooks, folders, pens, pencils, erasers, glue and gluesticks.
Lacey Alber, volunteer and intake coordinator, said it depends on the student’s grade how much and what supplies they get. However, CCS provided the basics to students in kindergarten through 12th grade. The requirements to participate in Tools For School was the student had to be a student in Kosciusko County.
Parker said CCS would buy more supplies to help replenish the supplies they ran low on. People can call CCS to see if they have late donations or if CCS has anything left, but it’s not guaranteed CCS will have anything after the event ended Wednesday.
Alber said this is the first year the event has been structured as a drive-through.
“This is a more controlled way to have the best health benefit for people,” he said.
CCS was trying to be mindful of the current pandemic as the volunteers were wearing masks. CCS decided to do a drive-through more recently as they kept an eye on how things were going with the pandemic.
Ami Pitt, volunteer with CCS, said Tools For School had 40 to 50 volunteers help with Tools For School.
“So like (Tuesday), we had people shopping for the school supplies, we had people bringing them into the building and yesterday afternoon and evening, we had several families here helping us pack over 1,000 bags for all the grades, labeling the bags per the grade and even extras in case we run out for a certain grade,” Pitt said.
People from Warsaw Community School’s central office also volunteered at Wednesday’s event by helping hand out supplies.
“As (Executive Director) Randy (Polston) took over at CCS, one of the things we talked about was just the incredible programs that they have every year like Tools For School and we just asked, ‘How can we help? How can we get involved?’” WCS Superintendent Dr. David Hoffert said.
During the event, volunteers from WCS were making sure students were registered, “not only for Tools For School, but also for Warsaw Community Schools,” Hoffert said.
Hoffert said WCS had been involved with the event in past years by handing out flyers and making sure the community knows about the event, but not to the extent as this year. On Wednesday, school staff were also able to answer questions parents might have.
“With Randy taking over with CCS, and reaching out to them, we’ve just seen the incredible things they’ve done year in and year out with the program,” Hoffert said.
There was a lot of things that went into making the event happen.
Pitt said the process started several weeks ago with getting donations and getting the word about the event.
“We start donations getting in, either monetarily or supplies. Then we start looking at the numbers we did last year,” Pitt said, noting they look at how many students per grade they had the previous year. Once CCS gets all of those numbers, then they know what to shop for. They then go through the supplies that were donated to determine what they already have and what still needed to be shopped for based on the lists from the schools.
“It takes an army to do this,” Pitt said.
Parker said the event couldn’t happen without all the people that have donated. The fairgrounds donated the building for CCS to use for the event, Alber said.
Parker said Pathway Church and Teachers Credit Union, Warsaw Lions Club and Medtronic donated to the event. Pitt said Meijer donated 1,500 paper bags for the event.
“I think this is fully funded by people donating toward this or giving us supplies,” Parker said.
“Without donations from the community, we just could not put this on,” Pitt said.
Tools For School helps people not spend “that extra money on school they could be putting toward food, clothes, housing. And especially in our economy right now, a lot of people are struggling with rent,” Parker said, noting people are struggling with a lot of things. This year, is a little bit different due to the COVID-19 pandemic and “we have that added burden, so I think this year especially, I think it’s beneficial to relieve that financial burden.”
Hoffert said the benefit of Tools For School is that “this is our community surrounding our students and families, making sure that no kid goes without supplies starting off the school year. And we’re just eternally grateful for that.”
With Tools For School, students are able to start school ready, Pitt said. “Teachers can’t supply everything the kids need. We can’t expect the school systems to supply all the needs.”
If parents have multiple children in school, it adds up quick and the event is a great way to help “our neighbors,” Pitt said.
“Kosciusko County is great community. We come together, we take of all of our kids. It’s just a great place to live,” Pitt said.
The annual event has been put on by Combined Community Services for 25 years, said John Parker, director of emergency assistance.
Parker said the event usually gets about 1,000 people and they were wondering if Wednesday’s event would be a little higher due to people being off work due to the pandemic. “The line is already lined up to the road right now,” Parker said, shortly after the event started at 9 a.m.
Tools For School is “to supply needed items to kids that may not have the financial means to easily buy them themselves for school,” Parker said. Some of the items given away were notebooks, folders, pens, pencils, erasers, glue and gluesticks.
Lacey Alber, volunteer and intake coordinator, said it depends on the student’s grade how much and what supplies they get. However, CCS provided the basics to students in kindergarten through 12th grade. The requirements to participate in Tools For School was the student had to be a student in Kosciusko County.
Parker said CCS would buy more supplies to help replenish the supplies they ran low on. People can call CCS to see if they have late donations or if CCS has anything left, but it’s not guaranteed CCS will have anything after the event ended Wednesday.
Alber said this is the first year the event has been structured as a drive-through.
“This is a more controlled way to have the best health benefit for people,” he said.
CCS was trying to be mindful of the current pandemic as the volunteers were wearing masks. CCS decided to do a drive-through more recently as they kept an eye on how things were going with the pandemic.
Ami Pitt, volunteer with CCS, said Tools For School had 40 to 50 volunteers help with Tools For School.
“So like (Tuesday), we had people shopping for the school supplies, we had people bringing them into the building and yesterday afternoon and evening, we had several families here helping us pack over 1,000 bags for all the grades, labeling the bags per the grade and even extras in case we run out for a certain grade,” Pitt said.
People from Warsaw Community School’s central office also volunteered at Wednesday’s event by helping hand out supplies.
“As (Executive Director) Randy (Polston) took over at CCS, one of the things we talked about was just the incredible programs that they have every year like Tools For School and we just asked, ‘How can we help? How can we get involved?’” WCS Superintendent Dr. David Hoffert said.
During the event, volunteers from WCS were making sure students were registered, “not only for Tools For School, but also for Warsaw Community Schools,” Hoffert said.
Hoffert said WCS had been involved with the event in past years by handing out flyers and making sure the community knows about the event, but not to the extent as this year. On Wednesday, school staff were also able to answer questions parents might have.
“With Randy taking over with CCS, and reaching out to them, we’ve just seen the incredible things they’ve done year in and year out with the program,” Hoffert said.
There was a lot of things that went into making the event happen.
Pitt said the process started several weeks ago with getting donations and getting the word about the event.
“We start donations getting in, either monetarily or supplies. Then we start looking at the numbers we did last year,” Pitt said, noting they look at how many students per grade they had the previous year. Once CCS gets all of those numbers, then they know what to shop for. They then go through the supplies that were donated to determine what they already have and what still needed to be shopped for based on the lists from the schools.
“It takes an army to do this,” Pitt said.
Parker said the event couldn’t happen without all the people that have donated. The fairgrounds donated the building for CCS to use for the event, Alber said.
Parker said Pathway Church and Teachers Credit Union, Warsaw Lions Club and Medtronic donated to the event. Pitt said Meijer donated 1,500 paper bags for the event.
“I think this is fully funded by people donating toward this or giving us supplies,” Parker said.
“Without donations from the community, we just could not put this on,” Pitt said.
Tools For School helps people not spend “that extra money on school they could be putting toward food, clothes, housing. And especially in our economy right now, a lot of people are struggling with rent,” Parker said, noting people are struggling with a lot of things. This year, is a little bit different due to the COVID-19 pandemic and “we have that added burden, so I think this year especially, I think it’s beneficial to relieve that financial burden.”
Hoffert said the benefit of Tools For School is that “this is our community surrounding our students and families, making sure that no kid goes without supplies starting off the school year. And we’re just eternally grateful for that.”
With Tools For School, students are able to start school ready, Pitt said. “Teachers can’t supply everything the kids need. We can’t expect the school systems to supply all the needs.”
If parents have multiple children in school, it adds up quick and the event is a great way to help “our neighbors,” Pitt said.
“Kosciusko County is great community. We come together, we take of all of our kids. It’s just a great place to live,” Pitt said.
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