Buying school supplies for kids they don’t know ranks high on the list of Tacomans’ finest habits. No sooner do crayons go on sale for a quarter and markers hit 50 cents than Tacomans load up the shopping cart, swipe the debit card and broadcast the tools for a happy school year.
They hold drives at work and church and book clubs. When they shop for backpacks with their kids, they let them pick an extra one and fill it with all the supplies on the teachers’ list. Sometimes they tuck in a book.
Solo, they dart into school offices to leave piles of notebooks. As groups, they support neighborhood schools. Citywide (and county-wide) they team with Communities in Schools to Stuff The Bus. This year, Tacomans donated enough supplies to put 3,000 backpacks on buses bound for neighborhoods where many families live on low incomes and kids know that school is the best path to prosperity.
Read the whole story here at the Tacoma Weekly!