Back-to-school time can be an exciting, but also stressful time of year for any student, and especially so for kids in families experiencing financial hardship.
The added costs of getting ready for a new school year can be difficult to overcome and the related stress that comes from not having what’s needed can prove to be an unwanted distraction.
Enter Angels Community Outreach, a nonprofit organization in Pitman, Gloucester County, that offers help to families in need in the form of free food, clothing, toiletries and more.
Back-to-school drives are nothing new for the organization, which has been in operation since 2009, but Director Elissa Darrow said this year they’re doing things a little differently.
“I feel like there are so many organizations doing school supplies and backpacks,” Darrow said. “We are focusing on first day outfits.”
Darrow said there will be some school supplies and backpacks available, but the organization decided to address other needs that can feel just as important to a kid returning to school.
“We all remember going back to school and wanting to strut in, in our brand new outfit, and these kids want to do the same thing and they can’t,” she said. “It’s exciting to be able to do that for them and let them have that experience.
“A lot of the kids have anxiety about going back to school. Everyone’s excited, but for a lot of the families we work with, they’re not excited. They’re scared. They’re nervous. They’re going to get picked on. They’re wearing shoes with a hole in them. All these worries go through their head that they should never have to deal with.”
Families register for assistance with Angels Outreach through a portal on their website, and the initial participants in the back-to-school drive will be chosen from among those already registered.
Participating kids will get to come in and pick three new outfits for school including brand new sneakers, socks and underwear, Darrow said, along with toiletries, snacks and other food items.
Darrow said the initial drive will take place over several days and that they’ll continue reaching out to those in need into September. She said the number of families they’ll end up helping will be in the hundreds.
The program serves kids from Kindergarten through college, and Darrow said they were recently able to outfit one student with everything he needed for his dorm room, from a robe to a min-fridge, and they’re now working on finding a suitable laptop for him.
“There’s a big correlation between feeling confident and having the right items and doing well in school,” she said. “If you’re preoccupied with ‘I don’t have the right clothing,’ or ‘I don’t have this or that,’ you put your mind into that instead of your studies. We just want to try to make it as easy as possible for the kids.”
To help with their back-to-school programs, Darrow said they recently received a $50,000 grant from Taco Bell, which they’re using partially for their current drive, but also for ongoing efforts.
“It’s amazing,” Darrow said of receiving the grant. “It will help us with back-to-school right now, but also year-round. Back to school isn’t always that first day of school, it’s throughout the year. This is going to be a year-round thing for us to make sure kids have what they need.”