School Supplies Campaign expands reach

Providing backpacks and school supplies to Hamilton County students in need has been a passionate mission for the School Supplies Campaign (SSC), formerly known as the Backpack Campaign.
During Aurora Elementary School’s open house last Wednesday night, student and family liaison Paige McQuiston shared that 45 elementary students in Hamilton County received backpacks for the new school year, though 108 received them in total.
The outreach project has grown from efforts made by the Aurora Messiah Lutheran Church to help elementary school students.
“We started a long time ago where we were doing some things at our church trying to get some supplies for kids,” said Marilyn Vrana, a former middle school teacher at Aurora and SCC volunteer. “Then it got to a point we were having a hard time keeping up, because every year there were more and more needs.”
To fulfill the growing need, Vrana along with SCC volunteer and former Fremont Elementary School teacher Laura Jobman reached out to the Ministerial Association to involve nine churches from Hamilton County not only for elementary students in Aurora, but any student in Aurora, Giltner and Hampton.
“I think the catalyst for us was the pandemic,” Jobman commented. “When we all were feeling so isolated from each other, we were trying to think of ways with the outreach committee at Messiah Lutheran of how can we pull the Christian community back together in some way and this seemed like a perfect fit.”
This year, the outreach projected rebranded itself from Backpack Campaign to SCC to avoid confusion with the Backpack Program, a food program separate from SCC.
While the school year winds down in April, volunteers in SCC commence their efforts in getting the needed amount for the following year.
“We talked to our pastor, Pastor Rudy (Flores), who goes to the ministerial association and said the Schools Supplies Campaign is going to get started here,” Jobman explained. “By the end of May, we will want churches to kind of have an idea of what their commitment will be.”
By June, volunteers had reached out to guidance counselors from all three public schools to get a count of how many students are in need of backpacks and supplies. 
To keep the identities of the students anonymous, church members are only given information based on what needs the student will need for that year.
“Each church gets a bag and it has their instructions in it,” Jobman said. “Each of them will have the grade level, the gender and the school.”
Along with providing the requested school supplies asked for by the school, students will provide lists of what they will need throughout the school year. 
Once the number of students is accounted for, churches are given the number of backpacks or apples they will be gathering. 
“Each church has their own way of handling it,” Jobman said. “In Messiah, we say that it’s God at work and it’s our hands to get in helping with it.”
With the amount students growing each year, Vrana commented on how students are in need more than realized.
“If you don’t have kids, you don’t really realize,” she said. “You start buying all that stuff with the backpack that really counts up and when you think families that have several children and then you have clothes besides, that’s really a burden for them. It’s nice at least we can lift a little bit of that burden for them.”
Having helped more than 100 students in time for the new school year, both Jobman and Vrana shared they were astonished by the amount of support SCC has received from the churches and communities.
“It was just overwhelming,” Vrana said. “If we can work as a community, because it was through COVID, we wanted to do anything we could do as a community to help the school, help the kids.”
Jobman added that the highlight for SCC was the kindness given by churches.
“I think an added bonus for me is that we gained in our fellowship with other churches and I’ve been blessed to meet with several coordinators,” she shared. 
McQuiston, who had given the backpacks to the students during Aurora’s open house, shared that the families were moved by the community’s support.
“They were grateful,” McQuiston said. “(They said) it really helped out this year. They just needed a little bit of assistance and it’s a relief for them getting the support from the community.”
Jobman and Vrana expressed gratitude for the churches as well as the guidance counselors for their work in helping students get an excellent start to their school year. 
“It’s been a real blessing for everybody,” Vrana concluded. “Sometimes it blesses us more than the kids, quite honestly, in what it does for us as individuals and as a community.”