Waverly United Methodist Church Donated Items for Backpack Give Away

Waverly United Methodist Church's Nurture and Outreach Committee members Pastor Anne Canfield, Betty Bump, Wendy Lupo and Rachael Lasco

(WAVERLY, NY) The Red Door Thrift Store and Coffee Shop and SRAC are teaming together with many organizations in the community to help Waverly students get ready to back to school by hosting a back pack giveaway on Friday, August 24th from 1-4pm. The first 300 kids will be able to get a free back pack loaded with needed school supplies for the school year for free.

SRAC’s Deb Twigg stated, “Unlike Pennsylvania students, Waverly students are required to bring their own supplies such as crayons, glue sticks, pencils, folders, erasers, loose paper, pens, spiral notebooks, three ring binders and marble composition notebooks. This can be very stressful for many families, and we want to help We plan to have as much of these supplies on hand as well as the free backpacks. In addition, each carnival game will be ran by WAVERLY TEACHERS and kids from any town can win supplies during the event.”

The most recent donation of supplies for the event came from the Waverly United Methodist Church. The Church’s Nurture and Outreach Committee is involved with many great community events focused on the community’s needs such as food drives, blanket, hats and mittens give-ways in the winter, fundraising events for the local animal shelter, and free lunches for kids throughout August when the summer recreation program has ended so that there is food for the kids available until school lunch programs begin. Throughout this summer, they also collected school supplies for Waverly students in need. Those supplies were donated to SRAC to give away during the event on August 24th.

Waverly United Methodist Church’s Pastor Anne Canfield commented, “The big thing is that it’s so cool to work for the benefit of the children of the community. We ALL need to work together; we will always be better working together than alone.” In fact this totally free event has done just that. Some examples are the Red Cross who will be on hand and giving away coloring books, childhood obesity information will be provided by Guthrie's Diabetes Center, Free library cards will be given away by the Waverly Free Library, bullying classes will be held by ProCare, and Tioga County Sheriff's Dept will also host "Project Safe" to fingerprint all kids under 18 and provide a photo id at no charge. Monetary donations to buy supplies were also accepted from Elderwood for $300, Chemite for $100, Shadowbox Treasures for $50, and WalmMart for $25. Combine this with many more opportunities to get needed funding, insurance and support for kids in the community along with a dunking booth, bouncy house and animal petting area provided by Stray Haven - and it is a free afternoon dedicated to kids and provided at no charge by their community. Twigg added, “Thanks to all of the people and organizations involved in making this a special event for our community. Things like this make me proud to be part of the Valley.”