Another year of Benjamin’s Backpacks is complete, and we are incredibly grateful for all that this initiative allowed us to provide.
This year, Benjamin Benefit Foundation invested thousands of dollars and distributed 250 backpacks, 70 water bottles, and hundreds of additional school supplies and essentials to students throughout our region. Backpacks, lunch bags, notebooks, folders, crayons, markers, colored pencils, highlighters, glue sticks, scissors, clothing, shoes and more made their way to students through Sto-Rox Elementary, Montour, St. Anthony’s School Program and Pressley Ridge.
While helping students begin the school year with the tangible items they need remains an important part of Benjamin’s Backpacks, we were especially excited to expand the initiative in some meaningful ways this year.
Making Classrooms More Comfortable and Functional
Especially significant to us was the opportunity to provide a special education classroom at Sto-Rox Elementary with 39 pieces of flexible seating.
The variety of seating will help make an already warm and welcoming classroom even more functional for its students, providing different options to meet a range of individual needs. Some of these are items Benjamin used—or could have benefited from—in his own classrooms.
For that reason, helping make the school day more comfortable, accessible and productive for students with needs similar to Benjamin’s is particularly meaningful to our family and foundation. It is one of the ways we are able to take what we learned through Benjamin and use it to make things a little easier for other children.
Supporting Kindness, Friendship and Inclusion
In addition to the wide array of school supplies and essentials, we were pleased to expand what we provide to schools to include something that, while intangible, can be invaluable.
This year, Benjamin’s Backpacks funded five Josh & Gab kindness assemblies at area schools. Presented in a fun and entertaining way, these programs celebrate
differences, encourage respect for oneself and others, explore what it means to be a good friend, and help children develop confidence in who they are.
We hope these are messages that stay with students as they continue to grow and learn.
It feels especially fitting that these assemblies were funded through Benjamin’s Backpacks. Kindness, friendship and inclusion are values deeply connected to Benjamin’s life and to the work we strive to carry forward through Benjamin Benefit Foundation.
A Community Effort
None of this happens without community support.
We are grateful to everyone who donated supplies throughout the summer, as well as to Robinson Township and Clever Park Pool for welcoming us at Float Night and giving community members another opportunity to contribute.
We are also grateful to carry out these efforts alongside Mason’s Movement. While Benjamin’s Backpacks and The Empty Porch Project each have their own special focus, we consider them part of a shared effort. Our fundraising throughout the year—specifically our Super Bowl Squares—provided a significant portion of the funding that made this summer’s projects possible.
Through The Empty Porch Project, we were also able to send care packages to dozens of families across Pennsylvania and beyond who have lost children. During a season filled with back-to-school photos, routines and milestones, these packages are a simple way of reminding bereaved parents that their children are remembered and their names continue to matter.
Looking Ahead
As Benjamin’s Backpacks continues to grow, we hope to provide schools with support that extends beyond traditional school supplies and responds to what their students and classrooms actually need.
For the next school year, requests from schools will be accommodated on a first-come, first-served basis and according to the funding available for the initiative. We encourage administrators and teachers to contact us well in advance of the school year if there are specific classroom resources, student needs, or assemblies they would like us to consider funding.