Target Volunteers Help Load School Backpacks For Okla. Tornado Victims
MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) -- Target employees opened their schedules and their hearts to volunteer for the Kids In Need Foundation Monday.
The local charity is taking action to serve as a second responder to the youngest victims of the devastating Moore, Okla. tornado.
Dave Smith is the executive director of the Kids In Need Foundation.
"We call our program second responders," Smith said. "We call them first responders with the water and blankets and things like that, but we are there after the fact when the kids go back to school. We're always told that when a community suffers a natural disaster that when the kids go back to the classroom, the community feels some sense of normalcy at that point."
The students of two elementary schools and one junior high, destroyed by the EF-5 tornado, will not return to their classrooms of concrete, but make-shift schools instead. Thus fulfilling the need for school supplies, will turn a minus into a plus for the 2,000 displaced Moore students.
Pens, pencils, notebooks, markers and crayons are donated or are purchased through donations by corporations like Target. The Minneapolis-based company also provided the sweat equity of 25 employee volunteers who filled brand-new backpacks to the zipper.
Along with the supplies, each pack contains a handwritten note from the volunteers wishing the students an A+ school year, adding a personal touch to what truly is a care package.
