The Poor Handmaids of Jesus Christ, a vowed community of women religious, work to meet the needs of some of the most vulnerable people in the communities in which they live and work. Many of their ministries focus on healthcare, social work, education, spiritual direction and much more. Currently, their focus is on making sure that employees at The Center at Donaldson and children in the surrounding communities have the school supplies and backpacks they need to start the school year off right.
“We’ve been working on this project for about a month, but we’ve done it the last two to three years,” said Julie Coldiron, reception coordinator at The Center at Donaldson and volunteer on the backpack project. “The backpacks are here to help out our coworkers, any extended family, or friends that they know of. We usually have at least 50 backpacks.”
School supplies are a necessity for kids, but supplies are not what elementary schoolers are worried about. All kids are worried about is fitting in with their friends, and, while not having a new backpack is nothing to be ashamed of, it is one of the things that can make a child feel different.
The backpacks are colorful and fun styles for children to wear with pride. There is floral, camo, rainbow, and animal print backpacks along with many other unique options. Older people might not think about it, but a child’s world is contained to school, home, extracurriculars, and having a cool backpack can really influence their perception of themselves at school.
“The hardest item for us to get is, at first, backpacks,” said Samantha Dunfee, volunteer and human resources assistant at The Center at Donaldson. “But there are just little things here and there. Like right now; composition notebooks and headphones. Headphones can be found for like $5-10, but it’s one of those items you wouldn’t think of to get. That’s when the cash donations are really nice, so we can get necessities last minute.”
“Schools all want them to have over-the-head headsets, and earbuds aren’t allowed,” Coldiron added.
The supplies are based on local school supply lists, such as Knox, Plymouth, and Culver-based elementary schools. This assures that the backpacks are complete for families, rather than missing some key items.
“We make announcements that go out to all of our coworkers,” Dunfee said. “We try to keep them up to date on what they should donate. I’ll send them school supply lists and things like that. We work within the campus community.”
“The emails go out campus-wide which reaches out to the residents, Sisters, and our coworkers,” said Coldiron. “So we get supplies through everybody throughout the buildings and campus.”
The backpack project is a smaller community working to aid the greater community surrounding it. The effort is just as the foundress of the Poor Handmaids of Jesus Christ, Saint Katharina, would have intended.
