Rye Volunteers Fill Backpacks for Children in Need

There are seemingly endless rows of school supplies: stacks of notebooks, folders of various colors and designs, boxes of crayons and calculators.

No, it's not Staples. It's the basement of Resurrection Church, where, today, local volunteers will fill 1700 backpacks which will be distributed through agencies and shelters to Westchester children in need.

Helping Hands for the Homeless & Hungry, a non-profit organization made up of Rye and Harrison volunteers, has organized its Empty School Bag project for 24 consecutive years now. Helping Hands sent out solicitation letters for donations in May, and then ordered the supplies from a wholesaler in Queens. In the 24 years they have asked for donations, they have never once fallen short of their financial goal, thanks to the generosity of local individuals, families and businesses.

In July, Helping Hands committed to the number of backpacks it would fill this year. The first year of the Empty School Bag Project, it filled 180 backpacks. This year, the organization and its volunteers will fill 1700. Since the project began in 1987, Helping Hands has provided backpacks to more than 16,000 children in the area.

On Monday, the supplies were unloaded from trucks by volunteers including Rye High School football and field hockey players, local families and senior citizens. Helping Hands recruited volunteers from schools and local churches, offering community service hours and advertising in bulletins. 

"The age of the volunteers ranged from about seven [years old] to eighty-plus," said Brigitte Sarnoff, a board member of Helping Hands.

Today, about 200 volunteers will return to fill 1700 backpacks with supplies like notebooks, folders, pencil cases and highlighters. Each individual backpack contains 18 different items. Backpacks for older students will have calculators and dictionaries, while backpacks for younger students will feature boxes of crayons. The backpacks will be distributed through shelters and agencies such as Southern Westchester BOCES to young people in White Plains, Port Chester, Yonkers and Mount Vernon.

New school supplies are important because they act as an "equalizer" for students in need and their peers, said Elizabeth Brunson of Helping Hands.

"It's bad enough not to have a house or nice clothes, but these kids shouldn't look over and see the student next to them has the best paper and pens and they have nothing," Brunson said.

"It's also nice that they have something of their own," Sarnoff added. "They own these supplies; they don't have to share them."

Brunson and Sarnoff are both board members of Helping Hands, a group whose other projects include "Undie Fundie," an annual fundraiser for undergarments for Westchester's needy; "Dinner at Noon," which provides hot lunches at the Carver Center in Port Chester; and "Third Thursday," which gives out bagged lunches in White Plains the third Thursday of every month.

But the Empty School Bag project resonates deeply for Brunson, who is a mother, and Sarnoff, who is a grandmother.

"I think anything that affects children affects a mother," Brunson said.

"It's easy to relate to the cost, because I've been through it," Sarnoff said. "I remember the specificity of those supply lists—one year Rye required us to buy 'tropical-colored' markers!"

The School Bag Project also becomes personal for donors, who keep in mind their own children when giving money.

"It costs us $18 to fill one backpack," Brunson said. "And we'll have parents from the community donate $72—four backpacks, because they themselves have four children."

The project is especially rewarding for the volunteers who come and fill each schoolbag with the supplies a student needs to start the school year.

"The great thing about the project is the tangibility," Brunson said.

Not only is filling the backpack tangible, but the results are tangible, too—in the form of hand-written letters from the students and their parents.

"The mothers say how helpful the backpacks are," Brunson said. "And the kids send letters, with correct spelling or not, saying things like, 'This is the nicest backpack I've ever had!'"