For the fifth year in a row, generous donors and sponsors have helped AFFCF, and our partners, collect and raise funds to give away back to school backpacks and supplies to children in foster care. It’s an awesome and amazing effort, but I never realized exactly how awesome and meaningful this was for kids until I watched five children, first grade through high school age, receive and open their backpacks.
For children anticipating the first day of school, getting a new backpack before school starts is like an early Christmas! First, they hold up the backpacks and grin from ear to ear, and check out every angle, every zipper and every pocket. Then ….. everything comes out! Each child looks to see what is in their backpack and then quickly checks out what the other kids got. Same colored pencils? Check. Same crayons? Check. Folders for the elementary school kids and three ring binders for the high schoolers. Check. Then, they open and re-open the backpack pockets to make sure nothing is missed. Check. Next, everything is spread out on the table and pre-organized for the big move. . .paper goes in the binders, pencils go in the pencil box and the whole thing goes back together….and then comes apart again to see if there may be a more efficient or fun way to load that backpack. These pencils in this pocket, the paper in another pocket, the crayons in the pencil box, and then out of the pencil box. The art of arranging, and re-arranging a backpack is very personal for each child, and they work at it until it’s just right.
Kids in foster care typically have very little or nothing they can call their own. They mostly come in to foster care with little more than the clothes on their backs. So, when it comes time to start a new school year, it’s our pleasure to start them out with all new school supplies and a brand new backpack, that they can arrange and re-arrange until it’s exactly the way they want it. Then like every other kid in their school they are the same … ready with anticipation and excited to learn on the first day of a new school year.