Packing up for community kids

10-year-old Sunset Park student Jenna Shortt helps fill bags Thursday night for the PackSack Smiles group.

It is the thick of summer and the last thing on a kid’s mind it school, but one city organization is working feverishly to get back to school packs together for the city’s less fortunate children.

For the past three years the grassroots organization PackSack Smiles has helped school-aged children from low-income families by providing them with a start-up backpack full of essentials to start the school year off on the right foot.

“That’s one of the goals of the program is to help build self-esteem and to create and excitement around returning to school so certainly having the same as your peers is what this program does,” explains PackSack Smiles Chair Darlene Trip.

“And it is definitely filling a need in the community, because the community has really received the program well as far as our fundraising efforts have gone and in addition to that we’ve had no trouble increasing the number of children we support each year.”

Thursday night the group hosted the shopper drop off night, where approximately 90 mystery shopper volunteers drop off all of the packs for the kids that they shopped for.

“The thing that’s really exciting about our volunteers is not only the number that help, but the fact that they are multi-tasking, so people are doing a lot of different jobs in the organization, people are shopping and delivering, or they are packing and delivering or they are shopping and packing so there are a variety of activities that they can participate in and it really helps us get our job done.”

Last year the group supported 86 children but they have seen a significant increase in numbers and support that allowed them to take another huge leap to help children in the community.

“Our goal was a hundred (packs) this year and we exceeded our goal at 111, and the other thing is that we extended out all the way to Powassan this year so we’ve included those schools,” says Trip.

For 10-year-old Sunset Park student Jenna Shortt volunteering is something she loves to do.

“Well I came out tonight to help kids get ready for school. Help them and let them get the stuff they need like tooth brushes, books, back packs, pencils and everything else they need,” she tells BayToday.ca.

“I’ve learned that taking care of kids makes me feel very good inside, I just love helping, and I love seeing kids getting to get what they need.”

The group will deliver the backpacks at the end of August.