Mission donates supplies to needy
Published: August 28, 2006
The start of the school year in Rockaway was less than two weeks away, andEmily Monarque had a problem.
“I cannot go to school without any pencils,” the 11-year-old said definitively. “Because if I mess up in pen, I have to cross it out, and my teacher doesn’t like that.”
If pencils were all that Emily needed, back-to-school season would be a little less stressful for her parents. But there’s also notebooks and binders and glue and pencil cases, and of course, a backpack to put them all in.
That’s all after a summer of paying for camp and the ongoing expense of Emily’s braces. To make financial matters worse, Emily’s sister, Lauren, 4, will start preschool this year. Their mother, Sharon, figured that she’d be spending at least $100 on backpacks and supplies for her daughters.
“It’s a lot,” Sharon Monarque said. “They need more stuff each year the higher grades they go up.”
That’s where Sharon’s brother, Steven Reed, came in. Reed is one of the residents at the Market Street Mission, which on Sunday handed out more than 300 backpacks, each filled with school supplies, to the men’s families and other local families in need.
“I knew they could use them and they needed them,” Reed said. “Besides, I love my two nieces.”
This is the third year that the Market Street Mission has given away backpacks. They were given to families of the men at the Mission, a relief and rehabilitation center.
“It brings a lot of peace for the men here knowing their families’needs have been met,” said Susan Bosworth, who coordinated the effort at the Mission.
The backpacks also were given to families who were sought out by other organizations, such as Homeless Solutions, Wind of the Spirit and the Angel Food Ministry.
Lists of needy families were compiled by those organizations and given to the Mission, which bought the backpacks accordingly. They were filled with supplies donated by various individuals and organizations.
The number of backpacks nearly doubled from 180 last year to about 350 this year. Bosworth said greater publicity of the event this year may have contributed to the increase.
The event was inspired by an earlier program, dubbed “Project Pencil,” by Shelley Zimmerman, head of a nonprofit organization called Focus America.
That program distributed supplies-laden backpacks to families locally and in Kentucky, and some of the backpacks were given to families at the Market Street Mission.
Zimmerman’s program ended, but the mission adopted the idea, said Susan Bosworth, who coordinated Sunday’s event.
“Without her starting it, we wouldn’t have even thought about the need,” Bosworth said.
Aracely Diaz and her daughter, Nancy Turcios, 19, of Morristown, came to the event to get backpacks for Nancy’s sister, Kimberly Mendoza, 14, who will be a high school freshman in September, and her brother, Kevin, 3, who will enter preschool this year.
Turcios, who works full time to help support her parents, said that after “a lot of rent, a lot of bills to pay, this was a great big help for us.” She anticipated the family paying about $200 for her sister and brother’s school supplies.
She wasn’t sure whether Kimberly would necessarily be pleased with the backpack’s yellow color.
“I’m sure she will be grateful for receiving a book bag,” she said.
The money that the youngsters and their parents expected to spend on supplies is just a portion of what they and other families will end up spending on getting ready for school.
The National Retail Federation’s 2006 Back-to-School Consumer Intentions and Actions Survey showed that the average family of school-age children will spend $527.08 in back-to-school shopping, up from $443.77 in 2005.
Of that bill, school supplies — such as notebooks, folders, pencils, backpacks, and lunchboxes — will account for only $86.22. That cost stayed nearly unchanged from last year, at $86.04.
The increase this year is mainly attributed to the purchases of electronics, including everything from calculators to computers. Total spending on these items is expected to rise from $2.06 billion to $3.82 billion nationally, according to the survery.
Clothing will account for just under half the bill, on average $228.14 per family, up from $205.31 in 2005.
According to the survey, the Northeast is the only region that is expected to see customers cutting back on spending, dropping from $513.07 last year to $456.38 this year.
Many families — 41.9 percent — will do their shopping three weeks to a month before the start of school; 32.5 percent will do their shopping one to two weeks before the opening.
The backpacks themselves were purchased by the Mission. The supplies were donated by various individuals and groups, including Moore Family Chiropractic, Starbucks of Florham Park, St. Andrew’s Church in Randolph, the Girl Scouts of Washington Township, the Women’s Guild of the Community Congregational Church in Millburn and Christ the King Church in Denville.
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