YSS Provides School Supplies To Local Families
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WHEELING -- A small group of children from a local daycare center picked out colorful drawstring backpacks as Youth Services System Inc. provided local families and students with resource packets and other school supplies at one of two Ohio County Schools food distribution sites Thursday as part of the agency's annual back-to-school event.
While YSS is unable to hold their annual Celebrate Youth Festival at Wheeling Park this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the agency decided to still provide students the "tools they need for school this fall" by "piggybacking" on school food distribution sites set up at House of the Carpenter on Wheeling Island and Bridge Street Middle School in Elm Grove, according to YSS board member Missy Ashmore.
"It's kind of the best we can do given the circumstances," Ashmore explained, as she assisted other volunteers with YSS, the Wheeling Island Lions Club, The House of the Carpenter and UniCare as they loaded supplies in cars as they wore masks.
"Thousands of children in the community would come not only for the school supplies, but the whole community came together and gave away all sorts of donations," Ashmore said, while commenting about the annual back-to-school YSS picnic that began in 2008. "So this is a smaller scale this year. We have hundreds of backpacks that we are giving out at this location, as well as at Bridge Street Middle School today," she commented.
The resource packets provided each family a large variety of pamphlets from area family service agencies.
"We just wanted to somehow get this paperwork in the hands of each of the families just so that they know there is support out there. ... We want to support the families in the community and the children," Ashmore said.
YSS special events coordinator Terra Crews, who was assisting with loading supplies at the Bridge Street location where cars were backed up from the entrance to the school parking lot to National Road, said they were extremely busy.
She said they expected to distribute 3,500 backpacks between the two sites.
"This is such a gift to our community to be able to do this," Crews said.