Assembling School Backpacks for Refugees

“As a Relief Society we wanted to do a service project, so we looked on JustServe. One of the projects listed was helping with school supplies for refugees and it looked like a great opportunity,” said Erika Walker from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saint’s Castle Hills Ward in the San Antonio North Stake. Ward members have been compiling the school supplies for the last month. Members of the Castle Hills Relief Society, along with families from another ward, who saw the project on JustServe, assembled the backpacks today from the donated supplies.

Children helped their parents assemble the backpacks that will help get refugees ready for school

The Center for Refugee Services, where they met to assemble the school supplies, will distribute the backpacks to school age refugees on August 8, 9, and 12th. For more information on helping with distribution: https://www.justserve.org/projects/6b455cea-d224-4fc0-8f8a-076362637614

Last week, volunteers from the Church met at the offices of San Antonio City Councilman John Courage (District 9) to prepare school supplies for distribution to kids in need.

Missionaries and Latter-day Saints at Councilman John Courage’s offices.

Councilman Courage’s office used part of the District 9 community fund to purchase school supplies and backpacks, ensuring that all students in the community have the chance for a strong start to the new school year. Thanks to positive turnout at past events, when they needed help sorting dozens of boxes of supplies and stuffing hundreds of backpacks, they turned to the Latter-day Saint community and JustServe.org.

District 9 offices, lots of school supplies!

A dozen volunteers, including adults, youth and full time missionaries from the Texas San Antonio Mission, crowded the District 9 field office and filled close to 400 backpacks for elementary, middle and high school students. Leftover school supplies from this project were donated to the Center for Refugee Services.