Between 2002 and 2007, members of the Newkirk Area Neighborhood Association (NANA) spent a day each year packing new backpacks with brand-new school supplies to distribute to homeless shelters, so the children living in them could go back to school in style.
Last year, instead, they made a donation of books to Public School 217, in memory of the group’s former president, Hynda Lessman, who had died earlier in the year.
While they had hoped to resume distributing backpacks again this year, NANA members were forced to put their backpack project on hold for 2009, because they were unable to secure a space large enough to accomplish it for the single day that the project takes up, said the group’s current president, Mavis Theodore.
“Everyone keeps calling and asking whether they’re getting backpack and supplies this year, and I’m sad that I have to say no,” Theodore told this paper. “I really want to revisit this, next year.”
Nonetheless, homeless students will get supplies, albeit in a more roundabout way. Because they could find no place to pack the supplies into the backpacks, said Theodore, the group has given donations of supplies to several Brooklyn elementary schools, which provided NANA with their wish lists, and it is up to the schools to distribute them to students in need.
“So, if homeless kids go to those schools, those supplies will be for those kids,” she explained.
In the meantime, approximately 1,200 children at 14 homeless shelters did not get the backpacks that so many children have benefited from in the past.
How important have the backpacks been? In previous years, NANA received enthusiastic notes from some of the children. A few years back, one child wrote that the new supplies, “Help me write. If there wasn’t supplies, nobody would do work. Everybody would be bad. I am good in school. I am never bad. I always do my work, and I always get my points. Thank you.”
“I want to say it was kind,” another child had written, “and I hope to meet you someday. I had everything I need for school just because of you.”
The project has grown by leaps and bounds since its inception. In 2002, 635 children at 12 shelters received backpacks. By 2007, 1,200 children in 14 homeless shelters were provided with school supplies.
While this year, it is already too late, Theodore is hopeful that arrangements can be made to restart the project in its original form next year, and is looking for a space that can be used. “I know things will turn around,” Theodore told this paper.
So far, NANA has provided school supplies for children attending Public School 139, 330 Rugby Road; Public School 3, 50 Jefferson Avenue; and Public School 249, 18 Marlborough Road.
In addition, Theodore said, supplies would be sent to Public School 6, 43 Snyder Avenue; Public School 13, 557 Pennsylvania Avenue; Public School 152, 725 East 23rd Street; and Public School 315, 2310 Glenwood Road, as well as two schools in Hoboken, N.J. Also, NANA is donating $500 to be used for the after school program at P.S. 217, 1100 Newkirk Avenue.
“By the end of the month, everyone should have their supplies,” Theodore said.
The project is funded through a variety of sources, including a $10,000 grant from the HGI Foundation, a matching grant for $2,500 from Hoboken-based John Wiley & Sons, and a $500 grant from the Independence Community Foundation, as well as donations from the general public, Theodore said.
“We’re in our eighth year of doing this,” Theodore stressed. “If people didn’t believe in what we were doing, we wouldn’t still be doing it.”
To help with the project, contact NANA at nana_assoc@yahoo.com.
