Richmond takes care of its own

5th annual Stuff the Bus event a success

By Kevin Spradlin
PeeDeePost.com

* Previous coverage: County prepares to ‘stuff the bus’

ROCKINGHAM — It’s a pretty good haul, said Walmart’s Jean Fletcher.

Walmart joined Richmond County Schools, Communities in Schools and the United Way of Richmond County in the fifth annual “Stuff the Bus” campaign, an initiative that aims to provide basic school supplies for less-fortunate students in the county.

Kevin Spradlin | PeeDeePost.com Will Thompson, Taylor Parrish and Jenna Staub collect donated school supplies from inside Walmart to take to the Richmond County school bus outside in the parking lot. The bus will deliver a load of supplies to the central office in Hamlet. From there, school social workers will help distribute the supplies to those who most need them.

Kevin Spradlin | PeeDeePost.com
Will Thompson, Taylor Parrish and Jenna Staub collect donated school supplies from inside Walmart to take to the Richmond County school bus outside in the parking lot. The bus will deliver a load of supplies to the central office in Hamlet. From there, school social workers will help distribute the supplies to those who most need them.

The day started slow, said Mallory Brown, Richmond County Schools public information officer. But things picked up when United Way Executive Director Michelle Parrish, daughter Taylor Parrish,13, and friends Jenna Staub, 15, and Will Thompson, 11, went into Walmart.

The store had placed two large cardboard school bus-shaped bins, one near each main entrance and exit of the store, to allow customers to voluntary purchase school supplies and donate them to needy kids in Richmond County. The pre-Stuff the Bus event, which began earlier this month, helped save the day and the overall goal of allowing all students to start the school year off with one less thing to worry about.

“The community has really embraced us over the past five years,” Michelle Parrish said. “Businesses look forward to it.”

Brown said Fallon Brewington, of Communities in Schools, will work with the social workers from the county’s 16 schools in order to ensure the supplies get into the right hands.

First, though, the supplies needed to be collected and sorted — and there was a lot to go through during the six hours Brown, Brewington, Parrish and family and friends gathered near the Walmart entrance in support of the Stuff the Bus campaign

Donations included tissue paper, hand sanitizer, composition books, notebook paper, binders, three-ring notebooks, glue, crayons, dividers, folders, pencils, pencil boxes, book bags, calculators, pencil sharpeners, spiral notebooks, rulers and highlighters — and plenty more.

Brown said the supplies this year were sorted Saturday before they were put onto the bus, which she and others expect will aid a more efficient distribution to county schools during the first week of the new school year, which begins Monday.

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