Director of Moncton Headstart remains hopeful, annual school supply drive begins

Moncton Headstart launched its annual school supply drive Wednesday, but with physically distancing measures the drive is looking different than previous years. 

No matter what school looks like in the fall, there is no doubt children will still need school supplies.

Moncton Headstart's executive director said, at first, it was hard to know if they should go forward with the campaign. 

"We talked to some individuals within the school system and they had encouraged us because of course school is supposed to be going forward," Mary O'Donnell told Information Morning Moncton. 

The supply drive is held every year to support children in the Greater Moncton Area. Families who cannot afford to purchase all the supplies bring their lists to Headstart.

Headstart gives the families most of the items on the list. Last year they helped over 1000 students. 

Big need

This year they are seeing a large need for donations of USB sticks, dry erase markers, construction paper, calculators, geometry sets, markers,scissors, one inch binders, paper protectors and dividers. 

She said this year families will have to register over the phone and schedule a specific time to pick up the supplies. 

There's also a change to how students get their new backpacks

"That's the really important part about school supplies for us. The children come in and get to pick out their own backpack and that's the exciting part." 

To make sure that excitement isn't lost, staff have come up with a variety of questions to ask over the phone to help determine what backpack would be best suited to each child. 

The questions will establish things like the child's favourite colour is, the kinds of animals they like or if they have a favourite character. 

"Because staff know what the inventory is they could quite easily say if someone likes animals, 'well, do you like cats or dogs or llamas or frogs?' Because we have bags with those kinds of things on it." 

She said typically they're able to easily predict how many families will need help, but the pandemic could change that.

"We don't necessarily expect that there's going to be much of a change in terms of the number of children we will serve but there could be, because this is not one of those normal, typical years." 

O'Donnell said even though many families are struggling financially they're hopeful they can get a good amount of donations.

"We expect that we probably will find some people won't be able to support it this year but hopefully there will be others out there who can afford to help us out." 

She said Tuesday a man who she's never seen before stopped by her office with bags filled with school supplies.

"I don't know who he is or what his financial situation is but I'd never seen him before. He didn't even know if it was going on but he still continues to do it." 

Supplies can be dropped off at Jean Coutu's in the Greater Moncton Area as well as the Moncton Headstart office. A supplies requested list is on the Moncton Headstart website.

Phone lines for people looking to access the program will be open from Aug. 4 to 26. 

"We never want anybody to give if they don't have anything to give," she said. "The donations do not have to be large. Obviously larger donations really do help us but it's not really about that. It's just about getting enough. I guess really that's what we hope for."