2014 ended with an outpouring of generosity from the Culver City Community. The CCUSD Backpacks for Kids program, which sends food home on the weekends for families of Culver City public school students, benefitted from an incredible bounty of public and community spirit.
Food drives were hosted at all of the schools, at local organizations including The Culver Studios, Tower Insurance, Cub Scout Pack 461, the Culver City Police and Fire Departments, and the Senior Center. Generous monetary donations from Euro VAT (Britta and Goran Eriksson), Marlene Winston, Marc and Martin Weiss, Jason and Lois Frand, CCEF, and School PTAs and Booster Clubs will all go to purchase food for the backpacks.
The most amazing food drive took place during the weekend of Dec. 13-14, 2014 at the Pavil-ions on Jefferson. The Culver City community showed how kind-hearted it is by donating $3,755 in food and more than $700 in cash and gift cards to the Backpacks for Kids program.
“These donations will go a long way to helping us fill over eighty five backpacks weekly for students at all of our Culver City Schools whose families do not have access to enough food over the weekend. We did not have to explain why this program is so important for people to give generously,” said Leslie Gardner, PTA Co-Chair of the program. “Kids who are hun-gry, struggle to learn. It is our responsibility as a school district and community to make sure that if something is getting in the way of learning, that we address it.”
Gift cards were given to CCUSD High School Counselor Adrienne Madrid to distribute to students who might be raising themselves and their siblings, and to families, who are homeless or struggling.
“Much kudos goes to Stanley Hodge, III, assistant manager in charge of fund raising, who set up the food drive, gave us valuable tips, arranged an in-store display and helped us repeatedly all week-end,” said Jamie Wallace, Back-packs Co-Chair. “Also, thanks to everyone at Pavilions, from the checkers to the store man-ager who made everything run smoothly. Thanks, too, to Culver City High School senior and Pavil-ions employee extraordinaire, Christian Alvarado, who helped us carry items out to the cars, boxed everything so we could carry it, and was an all-around wonderful helpful person.”
Since 2013, the CCUSD Back-packs for kids program has pro-vided more than 10,000 meals. Currently, the program has enough food to fill backpacks for almost two months. Donations are still needed to enable the pro-gram to continue to the end of the school year.
To make a tax deductable donation, persons interested can visit: http://www.ccusd.org/apps/news/show_news.jsp?REC_ID=412414&id=0 or make checks payable to CCCPTA and put “Backpacks” in the memo. Checks can be mailed to: 4034 Irving Place, Culver City CA 90232. For additional information, persons interested can email: CCBackpacksforKids@gmail.com.