School Tools Distribution: Another Huge Success
By Bob Loring
August 26, 2008

On Saturday, August 16th, many East Pasco area residents came together to celebrate the onset of the 2008-09 school year. Registered families from East and Central Pasco eagerly lined up at Wesley Chapel Elementary School cafeteria to obtain backpacks ‘brimmed to the top’ with essential school supplies for over 800 children. A host of volunteers, including the cheerleaders from the high school, members of the San Antonio Rotary Club and others, acted as shoppers for our participating family members. It all worked as if it were charmed. All participants, both the givers and receivers, partnered to provide essential school tools for deserving children at this charismatic gathering.

Like Toys for Tots of East Pasco functions, our community eagerly responded to the request to donate school supplies. Many businesses throughout our fair community allowed our helpers to place collection boxes in their local establishments; and folks from our caring community responded in kind. The list of cooperating business reads like a Who’s Who of helpful companies. The New York Yankees sent the organizing program, Projects of Pasco, Inc., a huge check. And many other businesses cheerfully found ways to contribute, including: Verizon, The Greater Wesley Chapel Chamber of Commerce, VFW Auxiliary, Fraternal Orders of Eagles, Red Hot Tootsies of Tampa Bay Golf Club, Sweetbay, and the San Antonio Rotary. Many thanks to Metro Storage for assisting us to store our collected supplies; and many other groups and organizations, to numerous to name, willingly pitched in to help make this year’s effort a huge success.

In my view the import of this event is measured by two critical factors. First, we needed to efficiently distribute abundant amounts of our collected supplies, but importantly, we also needed to display the spirit of kindness and goodwill to our participating families. In essence, I believe that how we do this is equally as important as what we are doing. Our registered families need our assistance, but they also need our reassurance by a heartfelt exhibit of our support, humility and understanding.

As today’s gas prices continue to feed worldwide inflation, most of us are surely feeling the effects. If you are feeling the squeeze by rising prices, then I ask, just imagine how our many Toys for Tots families must be feeling? With their children living in bitter poverty they are faced with some dreadful choices. With each new day, they are compelled to face some tough choices: should they, for instance, buy food, gas, or pay-off some of their ever-mounting bills? And, at the end of each day, will they have enough food to feed their family, and children?

In days’ passed, and I’m harking back to the days when I lived in a Norman Rockwell USA painting, communities took care of their own. We need to return to those days of yore, our lives and future depends upon it. America will recover, we must adapt, and then we shall surely overcome. At our ‘Back to School’ event I saw it working. And, I’ll see it again when we implement our area’s Toys for Tots 2008 Campaign. I have resolute faith that our Pasco communities, will again, help those in need; and I have confidence that, someday soon, we will (again) make the great “American Dream” assessable to all our precious children.

It should be noted that we had fewer families attending our school supply distribution than last year. My thinking is that the extraordinary high cost of gasoline kept many of our folks from participating this year. Next year, we dream of providing a school supply distribution for each one of our East and Central Pasco communities. Modeled directly upon our successful Toys for Tots distribution, we’ll seek to provide a distribution for each one of our deserving communities: Wesley Chapel, Land O’ Lakes, Zephyrhills, Dade City and the Tri-Communities of Lacoochee. We are currently searching for suitable community partners to head up a program in each of these deserving communities.

I take my hat off to all our caring Pasco neighbors. Anna Fulk, and her committed team from Projects of Pasco, Inc., again did an OUTSTANDING job! Together, and once again, we managed to partner with hundreds of deserving families. By the time the first school bell rang in August, we had provided 945 deserving children with the tools necessary to succeed the 2008-09 school year. For if we manage to do our job right, and with our heart-felt devotion and determination, many of our precious children will succeed in becoming credits to their community. With the active help of our caring community, that surely must be our common goal!

Ok neighbors and friends, I now pronounce our 2008 “Back to School” program a success, and now our 2008 Toys for Tots campaign is gleefully underway!