Backpacks Filled with Free Supplies for Students

The congregation of met Sunday afternoon to pack school supplies for 500 students at Broward Elementary in Seminole Heights during Backpack Attack Tampa 2011.

All 400 students will receive a backpack with paper, pencils, rulers, folders, glue, crayons, highlighters and anything else the average student might need. An additional 100 bags were filled for children who attend the church.

"In the past we've always just opened this event up to the public," Director of Community Events Brad Barmore said. "Some years we've given out as many as 4,000 backpacks, but we wanted something that was more of a sustainable relationship. We decided to partner with Broward Elementary because it's right around the corner. We decided to take the school supply list they use at Broward and give every student everything they need."

The supplies will be given to teachers so that they can hand the backpacks over to parents at this year's open house event. The idea is that the allure of the free stuff should get the parents out to the school and perhaps develop a partnership with their children's teachers.

"We hope parents will become more involved through this," Barmore said. "They are getting everything that they would have to buy for their school year. Years ago, we saw that there is a need in the community for parents to have help with back to school shopping. This is the church's way to show them that they're loved and there is help out there for them."

In order to raise funds for the event, it took an incredible amount of donations from the Common Ground congregation. Valued at $20 per backpack, Barmore had to oversee an effort to raise approximately $10,000.

"We opened it up to people to either write a check and donate or they could go out buy supplies themselves," Barmore said. "We've had partner churches from across the state contribute and we got the whole thing covered through contributions almost to the dollar."