Teachers, Corporate Volunteers Rally for Free School Supplies for Kids in Need
More than 80,000 children in St. Louis cannot afford the basic school supplies they need to succeed in school. On Aug. 1 the St. Louis area community came together to help these students and kick off KidSmart’s Push for Pencils community wide school supply drive.
Teams of KidSmart eligible teachers and corporate volunteers competed in various events such as a paper relay, a pencil stuffing competition and a shopping spree, to win supplies such as a grade level set of notebooks, a 
class set of markers and more than 1,000 pencils. Office Depot generously donated all of the supplies for the competitions.
All eligible KidSmart teachers who attended also received a class set of books from Scholastic Books. Push for Pencils is a community-wide school supply drive that runs from Aug. 1 – 31. More than 80 businesses, with more than 300 locations, and 37 office buildings are holding supply drives.
Community members can drop off supplies at any Office Depot, Crown Vision Center, American Equity Mortgage, National City or local Toyota dealership. KidSmart helps kids in need succeed in school by providing them with free school supplies.
Teachers who teach in schools where more than 70% or more of the students are on the free and reduced lunch program, a national poverty index, are eligible to shop at the KidSmart free store. Last year KidSmart distributed more than $1.25 million in school supplies to more than 33,000 area students.