Every summer the Santee-Lakeside Rotary Club (SLRC) members engage in a magical time of service dedicated to making sure students have the necessary supplies for the beginning of the school year. For the last several years, club members have participated in a community-wide effort known as Buddy’s Backpacks for Kids.
This outreach began in small numbers by a local mobile home park association known as SMOAC as a way to give back to the community and now has grown to a sizeable effort that includes participation by the community-at-large, local officials, the fire department, the school district and of course, Rotarians.
SLRC participates in a variety of ways from contributing supplies and backpacks to working with the community in securing donations and donation sites. Rotarian, Elana Levins-Craig serves on the SMOAC Buddy’s Backpack Planning Committee for this outreach and was responsible for this year’s distribution at Rio Seco School. Other Rotarians provided much needed support the days prior to the event in doing the labor-intensive work of sorting backpacks by age bracket, laying out supplies for easy placement into the bags and lastly helping to stuff backpacks with the needed supplies. Supplies and backpacks are provided to children K-12 as long as supplies last. This year’s total reached 1100!
