The Cleveland campus community recently answered the United Way’s call to “Stuff the Bus” as part of the organization’s annual effort to collect school supplies for families in need. The campus drive, held Aug. 1-14, marked Cleveland’s ninth consecutive year of participation as part of the institution’s service mission.
Collection bins were placed at the south entrance, in the health center and in the third floor kitchen area and Clevelanders were encouraged to donate a variety of school supplies to the cause. In all, students, faculty and staff members filled the bins with boxes of Crayons, packages of pens, pencils, markers and highlighters, construction paper, filler paper, folders, scissors, glue and glue sticks, notebooks, erasers, pencil boxes and loose-leaf binders.
“Back-to-school season is an exciting time, but it can be really stressful for families who can’t afford the basic school supplies to start the year off right,” Marjorie Bradshaw, assistant to the president and Cleveland’s United Way campus coordinator, said. “I’m thrilled with the generosity of our fellow Clevelanders with folks from all across campus participating, buying and donating school supplies for kids in our community. It’s always a joy to see our service mission in action.”
Bradshaw said a fun aspect of this year’s drive was that those who donated were encouraged to post “selfies” to Facebook and Twitter. Many Clevelanders joined in the action and the United Way shared some of them on its Facebook page.
This year’s campaign benefitted the United Way of Greater Kansas City’s 65 Quality Matters after-school learning sites, which serve more than 5,000 children throughout the region. The program is focused on strengthening out-of-school programming by training and coaching youth program staff members on ways to better engage children.
