One stop shopping: Easing the back-to-school financial burden

I love seeing the kids as they get ready. There’s something just special about freshly-sharpened pencils and a clean notebook that just prepares kids to be excited about the school year, excited about learning.

GREEN BAY – Gathered at the UW-Green Bay Kress Events Center, the Salvation Army, Service League of Green Bay and other organizations set up a One Stop Shop to supply 3,700 students with school-year necessities.

Salvation Army Area Coordinator Catherine Fitzgerald described the extensive options as, “Kind of our bare essentials. So we got our backpacks,...notebooks, markers, scissors, pens, pencils, paper, you know, those kinds of things everybody needs. We have our middle school and our high school backpacks out here, socks, underwear, toothpaste and toothbrushes...And then on the other side of the room we have our resources. So, lots of different agencies that serve families have come together so people can connect with all the good things that are happening in Green Bay.”

The overarching goal of the drive “is to get students in a place where they’re ready to learn and able to excel at school. So, we’re providing school supplies and backpacks so that they’re ready to learn on day one...whatever we find that we are like, ‘Oh a student needs this to succeed,’ then we brought it today,” said Fitzgerald. “I love seeing the kids as they get ready. There’s something just special about freshly-sharpened pencils and a clean notebook that just prepares kids to be excited about the school year, excited about learning, excited about a new classroom and new friends, so I think that’s all symbolized here with us helping get them ready and be ready.”

Fitzgerald also noted that the fresh cut notebooks and newly sharpened pencils provide “such a relief for parents because this time of the year can have so many financial burdens that then you wonder, ‘How am I going to make ends meet at the end of the month?’ That they can just make a phone call, click on a button and sign up and the basic necessities are going to be provided is such a relief.

“As the salvation army... Our mission is to serve people and help them navigate the complex challenges of poverty. We’re here for it, we’re seeing lives change, we’re seeing people engage and transform. This is just such an opportunity for us to give back and to share...you don’t always see the challenges that parents face with school supplies, coats and Christmas. Those are the big ticket months for parents, so we love that we get to kind of serve in that way.”

Though the One Stop Shop in its current form has just been operating for two years, Fitzgerald acknowledged that, “Different organizations have been providing school supplies and things for many years. (The One Stop Shop) was really born out of a desire to make things easier for our guests so that they really only need to come to one place to get everything they need. We all had a different piece of the pie, so then families had to visit different places on different days to get all of the items. But coming all together like this is really making it easier for them.”

In order to pull off such a large event, Fitzgerald said that the Salvation Army had collections “all over town.”

“We had a partnership with Walmart for Stuff-the-Bus; we also requested some grants and some businesses to sponsor the event because we purchased a lot of the supplies as well,” she added.

In the future, Fitzgerald recognized, “We really need to increase the awareness of the event for us to get more donations just because we’re purchasing so much. We know that there’s so many people that want to support students in Green Bay, but because of the timing, we have to do this early, so sometimes the message doesn’t get out there in time.”

After the One Stop Shop is complete, the Salvation Army is diving right into their next event: “Coats for Kids.”

“That starts in the end of September. We get those donation boxes out around town and then at the beginning of November, we have that big distribution. So families can sign up, they’re going be seeing that link soon where they can sign up. But also volunteers and donors, we’ve got to get those coats collected, so we transition right away,” she explained.