The Bryan County Turning Point Coalition, with help from sponsors, gave out backpacks filled with school supplies Saturday morning during the Back to School Bash at the Boys & Girls Club.
Melynda Keeling, chair of the Bryan County Turning Point Coalition, said this was the 10th year for them to host the Back to School Bash and the second year for the giveaway to be held at the Boys & Girls Club.
“It allows for the children also to get to play and it’s an event for them to get hot dogs,” Keeling said. “We had about 744 individuals pre-registered for their children and so with the support of all of our sponsors and donors and collections, we were able to prepare over 1,000 backpacks.”
Keeling said almost double were pre-registered compared to last year.
Haircut vouchers were also provided to the children.
“That’s one thing that changed from last year, instead of doing haircuts on site, a number of our stylists just made out vouchers good for a week so parents aren’t obligated to wait all day or have to do it on one day,” Keeling said.
The supplies in the backpacks ranged from pencils, Crayons, markers, notebooks and other necessities. The backpacks were broken down into pre-school, elementary school, middle school and high school, according to Keeling.
“The Bryan County Turning Point Coalition handed out 446 backpacks with supplies and provided a haircut voucher for each child,” Keeling said, after the event.
She said leftover backpacks were taken to the Big Five Jackie Watson Child Development Center. Anyone needing backpacks can contact Big Five or Bryan County Youth Services to arrange pick up.
Turning Point also donated 100 backpacks to the Elks Lodge and 75 backpacks were left with the Boys & Girls Club.
“We also sent about 75 to Feeding Hope that they will distribute on the 13th when they feed the community,” Keeling said, adding that some were also provided to the Durant School District.
The Payton Project, an organization that helps children in the county, has additional supplies to be provided to Silo Schools.
“We would like to thank our community partners for making this a success,” Keeling said.
Keeling was also representing the Durant Lions Club and their KidSight program that provides eye screenings to the children. Keeling said there were 38 screenings with 28 passing the exam, one exam that was aborted and nine children were referred to an eye doctor for additional testing.
The Durant Elks Lodge gave out school supplies on Sunday afternoon.
“We bought all this stuff to give to the students of the schools of Bryan County,” said David Nankivil, Elks Lodge trustee.
“We donated $500 to the Bryan County Youth Services and they bought backpacks. They didn’t give all of their stuff away so a lot of this came from down there to give the rest of it away.”
The Elks helped 72 families and 149 children and they plan to make the school supplies giveaway an annual event.
