Parker Street Food & Furniture Bank is worried it might not be able to meet the demand of low income families who need help with school supplies for the up-coming school year.  Currently Parker Street has only enough school supplies and backpacks for 200 students, a far cry from the 800 students expected to be knocking on its doors in 2 weeks’ time.

Parker Street Food & Furniture Bank began giving out school supplies about 9 years ago.  The number of families requiring help has drastically grown over the years.  Students will be heading back to school in less than two weeks and many families can’t afford school supplies and backpacks.  It costs a minimum of $50 for all the supplies and a back pack for each elementary school aged child and for junior high and high school that number can jump to $150 because they need expensive scientific calculators and USB drives.

“Our Back to School Program helps vulnerable members of the city who just want to send their kids to school with all the tools they need to start the year off right,” said Cynthia Louis, who coordinates the program for Parker Street Food Bank. “We are extremely short on back packs and items for children past the elementary school age.  Things like calculators, composition notebooks, flash drives, geometry sets, pens and 3 ring binders are what we need most.  But we need supplies and money, the money we need to purchase any supplies that we don’t receive in donations.”

The deadline for donations is August 31, which will give Parker Street volunteers and staff the time to sort and pack the backpacks before September 6th, when families will be lining up to receive the much needed help.

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Source: Media Release