As students prepare to return to school, many parents feel the financial burden while shopping for school supplies. Around this time each year, though, we see the best of North Texas as people step up to provide for families in need.
An Oak Cliff organization, For Oak Cliff, has prepared to do just that. At 15 years old, rising sophomore Yamun Hempstead spent one of her last few days of summer volunteering for the organization.
“Because why not? This community raised me. I’m going to give back to it,” said Hempstead.
She joined a team that spent hours making sure backpacks were stuffed and boxes prepared for thousands of families in need of school supplies.
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“When you’re the kid in the class that doesn’t have a pencil or doesn’t have paper or this and that, it matters,” she said.
She’ll be there this Saturday when For Oak Cliff hosts its annual back-to-school festival at Glendale Park - an initiative that started eight years ago. Xavier Henderson, For Oak Cliff’s Chief Development Officer, said the group is prepared to meet the needs of at least 4,000 people.
“It’s a good start to a school year. You’ve got something to write on, something to write with. You can get to learning and studying,” said Henderson.
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According to The National Retail Federation, back-to-school shoppers are expected to spend an average of $168 more on school-related purchases, compared to 2019 before the onset of the pandemic.
“I used to be a teacher,” Henderson said. “And I know the challenges of kids showing up and not having supplies ready to learn. So, we want to remove any obstacle that we can.”
Henderson joined the For Oak Cliff team to walk the grounds of Glendale Park and mapped the layout of Saturday’s event. He and others prepared to do what they’ve done for the past eight years.
“It goes beyond just the supplies,” he said. “We provide food, we do rental and utility assistance. We just know that the need it exacerbated by so many of the challenges right now.”
For more information on For Oak Cliff back-to-school festival visit https://www.foroakcliff.org/
Additional resources:
https://allevents.in/mobile/amp-event.php?event_id=200023106594101
