Neighborhood Notes recently profiled local non-profit Schoolhouse Supplies and its laudable efforts to bring school supplies to children in need. At that time, Marketing Manager Erin Olinghouse asked if I would be interested in photographing a Schoolhouse Supplies packing party—an opportunity for a group of volunteers to stuff backpacks with school supplies and then distribute those backpacks on the first day of school.
How could I say no to that?!
On August 19, a group of volunteers from "The World's Greatest Bank" met at Madison High School [where Schoolhouse Supplies is headquartered] to stuff backpacks full of school supplies. It may sound like a lot of work, but a packing party is seriously fun business.
After getting the supplies organized on a table, the crew is timed on packing the supplies into about 250 backpacks. Each packing party does two runs and then their times are averaged and ranked against other organizations' times. After a little coaching and a lot of strategizing, the packing begins. The competition, however, never seems to end!
Two weeks later, the volunteers paid a visit to Marysville Elementary in the Foster-Powell neighborhood and distributed the backpacks to a group of appreciative students—but it was the volunteers whose hearts swelled with gratitude.
The smiling faces were an incomparable reward.
