2015 Nonprofit of the Year: Schoolhouse Supplies
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Wednesday, December 30, 2015
GoLocalPDX News Team
Schoolhouse Supplies' free store
It’s no secret that Oregon’s schools are ailing—in fact, GoLocal has reported on their difficulties multiple times—but solutions tend to focus on raising graduation rates for the whole state or the introduction of new government positions to help solve the problem. Too often, when we talk about fixing schools in Portland and in Oregon, we talk only of large-scale solutions that will affect thousands of students across the state and seem forget to focus on the needs of individual students.
Schoolhouse Supplies never forgets that, and their attention to students and teachers earns them the title of GoLocal non-profit of the year in 2015.
Schoolhouse Supplies works to support teachers in Portland with their unique free store, which provides school supplies at little or no cost. Teachers can visit the organization's free store and pick up school supplies for kids for free and give them to their students.
Alice Forbes, Schoolhouse Supplies’ Executive Director, said that the focus on individual students and teachers in needs are a vital part of the group’s work.
“Since opening our doors in 1999, our mission remains the same: to support public education in the Portland area by providing free school supplies to teachers and students,” Forbes told GoLocal. “We do this because we believe that every child deserves school supplies and has the right to a quality education.”
Alice Forbes
Helping Both Students and Teachers
According to Forbes, many, if not most, families in the Portland public school system struggle in poverty and are not able to afford school supplies for their children.
That burden is often passed onto teachers, who seek to fill gaps in their students’ supplies by paying for supplies out of their own pocket—not always easy on a teacher’s salary.
“With approximately half of Portland students identified as low-income, the $98 average cost of sending a child back to school with the supplies they need is out of reach for many families,” Forbes explained. “Teachers have traditionally had nowhere to turn but their own pockets, typically spending up to $1,750 of their own money each year to provide basic supplies that their students would not otherwise have.”
Along with the free store, which is open Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday afternoons from 1 PM to 6 PM, Schoolhouse Supplies also looks to provide supplies for individual students before the school year begins.
“We also provide backpacks at the start of the school year to children in need filled with supplies that should last the whole year,” Stephanie Webber, a representative for Schoolhouse Supplies, told GoLocal. “We believe that every child should have the chance to get a good education and economic or social inequality shouldn’t stand in the way.”
How to Help
For Rose City residents looking to help Schoolhouse Supplies get pens, pencils notebooks and more to as many students as possible, there is no shortage of ways to help.
Residents can donate a wide range of supplies, from basic tools like pencils, erasers and notebooks, to gently used supplies like scissors or rulers, office supplies like binders and notepads, incentives like calendars and book covers, arts and crafts supplies like chalk and construction paper, stationery and much more. Monetary donations are also welcome.
Currently, the free store is in particular need of items such as pens, crayons, markers, colored pencils, glue sticks calculators, pencil boxes, index cards, staplers, backpacks, tape and much more. You can find a full list of accepted and needed items on their website.
Would you rather donate your time? The Schoolhouse Supplies free store is a volunteer-run establishment. Each year, roughly 1,500 different volunteers help the organization gather and distribute school supplies. Volunteers can help at the free store, help with data entries and many other areas.
“There are lots of ways to get involved with Schoolhouse Supplies and support local students and teachers,” Forbes said. “ We invite individuals and businesses to contact us to learn more about our programs: the Free Store for Teachers, the Tools for Schools backpack program, and our biggest fundraising event of the year, the Celebrity Spelling Bee coming up on February 11.”
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