Supporting Students In Local Community

Long receipt from Staples donated school supplies to South East Helping Hands. From left: Dustin Lynes, Catherine Casper, Candice Cancade , Hank Klassen, Lene Ziprick

Southeast Helping Hands received a school supplies donation from Staples in Steinbach valued at $3047.88.

Staples Divisional Sales Manager Catherine Casper explains they have been giving donations for about four years and this year chose to focus-in on the Steinbach community by giving to Southeast Helping Hands.

“There's a lot of people working low-income jobs, there's a lot of people who are single parents, there's a lot of people who are immigrants to Canada and a lot of them go to Southeast Helping Hands,” says Casper. “We've heard of how many children are going there and with that many children who are underprivileged how are the parents going to support them? How are they going to pay for their school supplies? There's no way.”

Operations Manager at Southeast Helping Hands Candice Cancade says the amount of people using the food bank in September was 20% higher than the average. She notes it was directly related to families buying school supplies for their children.

“The parents that use our food bank will be able to provide their children with brand new school supplies. We did have a lot of calls towards the end of August with people saying, 'are you giving out school supplies?' 'Do you have notebooks?' 'Do you have backpacks?' 'Do you have pens?' Even a $10 box of pens is a lot of money. That can be the difference between two jugs of milk and school supplies.”

Cancade adds no child wants to go to school and feel like they don't have what the other children have. She says even being able to provide a new backpack that's not ripped or torn can go a long way in elevating their dignity and self-respect which in-turn allows them to be more attentive in school and feel better about themselves.

Cancade notes the new school supplies made for an exciting food bank day.