Piles of school supplies and individual backpacks sat on two tables at Rye High School on a steamy August day, ready for the army of volunteers that would fill 2,000 of them during the 34th annual “Helping Hands Rye” event, sponsored by Helping Hands for the Hungry and Homeless.
The group gives the filled backpacks to children in need.
All the school supplies, from crayons to sticky notes to pencils and pens, with calculators for older students, needed to be organized and made ready for the next day. Board members buzzed around the tables putting everything in order.
Twenty-four hours later, the volunteers poured into the gym, their lines moving like a well-oiled assembly line. Young children joined their parents. Rye residents joined volunteers from 16 local agencies to carefully fill each backpack.
Many of the Board of Directors of HelpingHandsRye.org have worked together for years. Co-presidents Susan Salice and Brigitte Sarnoff look back over years of volunteer contributions to those in need. Several volunteers remembered filling backpacks for the first time with Helping Hands on the Village Green. This year the group welcomed the use of the air-conditioned gym at Rye High.
Young Kim, Helping Hands vice president, surveyed the gym, noting that this was the first year a new vendor provided the vast majority of supplies. Kim and other Helping Hands board members point out that their group raises money each year so they can find the finest possible supplies, including those calculators older students need.
As Juli Schmidt, assistant treasurer, and Ellen Cacciapaglia, vice president, pointed out, there are few activities that Rye parents and their children can do together, each contributing to the final product.
Along with community volunteers of all ages, representatives of the 16 local agencies that receive the bags, were there to lend a hand.
Michael Wellington, training coordinator/Post No. 77 and advisor, Emergency Medical Services for Port Chester-Rye-Rye Brook, brought five Explorers, young people working with Emergency Medical Services.
And there was Larry Cohen, who years ago saw the sign for Helping Hands and the backpack project, and not only returns each year, but brought the idea to his home in New Hampshire, where, along with the local Rotary, they now fill 2,800 backpacks annually.
Sarnoff said the backpacks are distributed to deserving children by the agencies themselves. The process is anonymous, and, she said, done with “dignity.”
Ivan Smith, youth coordinator for Westhab’s Coachman Family Center in White Plains said, “The kids are very happy, the volunteers enjoyed it, and the parents are pleased with backpacks.”
Frank Cortright, a representative from Catholic Charities, was working with others to manage the recycling of all the cardboard. The project, he said, is “a blessing.”
Salice, said, “This year was 34 years of providing backpacks. Next year we will make a splash at 35!”