As featured in Denton Record-Chronicle on 6/29/2018 by Lucinda Breeding ...
There’s a saying that many hands make light work.
For agencies preparing for the first-ever Denton Back to School Fair, many hands mean serving more children and teens than they would if they tried to meet needs from their silos.
“This is a collaborative effort to make this a citywide drive instead of a piecemeal effort,” said Darhyl Ramsey, a volunteer with Interfaith Ministries of Denton’s Apple Tree Project. “Interfaith would have its school supply drive, and then the [Martin Luther King Jr. Recreation Center] and the police department would have their drives. If all of us work together, we can reach more kids.”
Ramsey said Denton’s nonprofits were duplicating one another’s efforts, and Interfaith officials were surprised when their usual grant applications to seek funding for the long-running Apple Tree Project were denied.
“There are so many of these school supply drives that we’ve had trouble getting our grants,” Ramsey said. “We got to talking about it with United Way and some other groups. We thought, why not do something like a Denton mayor’s school supply drive, or something like that?”
United Way of Denton County and Interfaith’s Apple Tree Project teamed up to recruit other local agencies to stage the fair. So far, at least 16 groups — including the city, local nonprofits, churches and businesses — have come aboard to collect school supplies for Stuff the Bus, the collection drive that starts Monday and runs through Friday.
“For me, it was also a good way to make it easier to find out how to get to the people who need the supplies,” said Alicia McElroy, the director of education and workforce initiatives for United Way of Denton County.
McElroy said United Way contacted the organizers of the biggest school supply drives in the city — the police department, the MLK Jr. Recreation Center advisory board and Interfaith — and suggested a single fair. The groups agreed to the idea.
The fair will happen in two stages. First comes Stuff the Bus, a citywide school supply collection drive. Denton residents can drop off school supplies at participating businesses, churches and nonprofits.
Organizers have ordered supplies in bulk, Ramsey said, and local businesses and nonprofits agreed to collect more supplies to provide for people who will attend the fair without registering. McElroy said about 90 percent of the students registered are on the free and reduced lunch program.
By Friday, more than 3,000 Denton ISD students had been registered for the fair.
“We originally planned for the collections to be supplements for those who don’t register. But now we’ll use those collections to get supplies to the students who were registered last week,” Ramsey said.
Donors can also donate money to the drive online.
Following the drive is the fair. The Denton Back to School Fair will be 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Aug. 11 at the University of North Texas Gateway Center, 801 North Texas Blvd. The free fair includes the distribution of supplies, eye exams presented by the Denton Lions Club, health screenings from Health Services of North Texas and haircuts — all available for free.
A live DJ will provide music, and attendees can eat hot dogs and enter a bicycle raffle hosted by the Denton Police Department.
McElroy said the participating agencies hope to stage the fair annually.
“Our hope is that through this fair, parents won’t have to hit up different school supply drives to get all of their children prepared for school,” she said. “We want the smaller groups to join us so that we can bring more resources to the table.”
Any surplus supplies will be given to Denton ISD, McElroy said.
“Children need school supplies all year,” she said. “The district always finds a way to put our donations to use.”