As a former elementary school teacher, I often saw children whose families couldn’t afford to purchase basic school supplies or snacks for their children. I tried to help whenever I could by keeping extra supplies I purchased in the classroom to have on hand when needed and adding some of these items to our treat jar. The kids got a thrill out of picking a new pencil with their favorite cartoon characters on it and didn’t have to worry about the embarrassment of saying they couldn’t afford supplies. Even though I am no longer teaching elementary school, I try to help the needy each year when school starts. I encourage my children to get involved too, because I want them to know how lucky they are to have supplies. We’ve tried lots of ideas over the years, but these are five of our favorite ways to help others.
1. Ding Dong Ditch— Each year we choose a family from our friends and acquaintances that needs a little extra help during the back to school rush. We fill a backpack with needed school supplies and sneak it onto their porch when they are not home. We would try to ring the doorbell and run, but we are so slow they would catch us.
2. Community Back to School Day– Several churches and nonprofit organizations send out lists of needed school supplies and snacks, along with services needed. On the Saturday before school begins, needy children can come and receive a backpack of school supplies, an assortment of snacks suitable for school lunch or snacktime, and needed services like haircuts. We always check out the list for our church and make a donation of needed items.
3. Back to School Barbeque. This one is tons of fun because we get to host a cookout. We ask guests to bring a couple of school supplies and we create a basket to donate to either a needy family or a local organization that helps needy kids.
4. Donate through your local Food Bank.
Do you have a #simplegiving idea to help children in need? I would love to hear your favorite!
This post was written in partnership with The Motherhood and Champions for Kids. All opinions are my own.
Great ideas! I’m loving this new Fruit Loops I keep seeing 🙂
I love Kellogg’s products! Sounds like a great cause. 🙂
Fantastic ideas! I always buy extra to take to the schools. It’s great to help out!
These are great ideas! I hate to think of kids in need of anything, especially basic needs like food and school supplies.
That is so sweet of you to help another family. Thanks for the reminder on another way to help others.
we do a backpack each year. the kids asked this year if we could do two- a boy and a girl one, since we have a boy and 2 girls. hard to say no! it’s a gift to give our kids to give to others, but so important for US to help one another too
That’s an awesome idea. Love the ding dong ditch!
The ding dong ditch idea sounds like a lot of fun. We’ll have to try it out.
This is wonderful! I wish we had something like this here for me to donate to and help with! I feel like I need to get involved more and this would be such a good way! So awesome
These are great ideas. Gathering enough school supplies can be hard on struggling families.
I love helping out with school supplies when I can. Last year I put together a whole box of school supplies for one of the teachers my children’s school. It not only felt good to donate, but to help kids that can’t afford supplies.
I love the ding dong ditch idea. I love to give back and pay it forward.
I love that you brought this up! I really need to get some stuff together for those less fortunate!
These are awesome ideas. 😀 We are going to have to try these!
The ding dong ditch idea is wonderful! I love the idea and we might try it out!
I love the idea of donating snacks. A great program and a great mission!
Thanks for sharing these great ideas! I love the ding-dong-ditch one! Simple and fun!
I love donating to schools. Learning is so important and it really shouldn’t have to be hindered by hunger.
What a great program. We always try to help when we can. I love to buy extra school supplies because they are always so cheap, and donate them. Our local Dollar Tree always has a bin set up for donations.
Thanks for sharing these ideas – I often have extras or wrong items that I can donate. I had no idea I could do it at Walmart either!
This is such a great program. It is great to hear companies taking a stand like this.
Champions for Kids has some really great donation ideas! I can’t wait to do our project!
Sounds like a great program! And on another note, I love your bag! Where did you get it?
our school does a bbq every year. we always missed it but hoping this time we are available
I love the idea of putting a bag with supplies at the door, I would not ring the doorbell either as i would never be able to ruin away in time.
It;a not hard at all to help those in nee. There is no excuse for not doing it. We all can help in some type of way. Great ideas to get people thinking about what works for them.
These are really great tips. I have seen a lot of families around here struggle to get their kids everything they need for back to school. There’s so much to get, and it can really be overwhelming if you are on a fixed income.
These are some wonderful ways to help out families in need! I love the Ding-Dong-Ditch idea… although, I wouldn’t be able to ring the doorbell and leave in time, either.
I love programs like this. They’re so important to hungry kids who depend on the generosity of others.
I love that Walmart has a program like this. Hehe, I can just imagine you and your kids running away only to be caught 😛
I think the idea of ding door ditch is fun. I would hate for kids to not have the needed school supplies for school.
This is such an amazing program, for such an amazing cause- education is crucial. I love how easy Walmart is making it to help!
The Champion Program is awesome. I will be participating this year.
These are some great ideas. I like these types of programs that encourage giving back!
Education is so important, but some kids don’t have the proper supplies to learn as well as they could. I love programs like this that support children’s learning.
What an amazing program! I have participated in their programs before, what a nice way to give back.
I really like how Walmart is doing so much for those who need this school year. I will be going to donate, for sure.
This is so great. I will make a point to go to my local Walmart before the 20th to donate to our local schools!
Having a BBQ is an awesome idea. I always take some supplies to the teachers at school.
I love these ideas… we just filled up a back pack at Walmart and left it in the big box out front. The kids had a blast doing it and I was happy to help them help others.
These ideas are really sweet, thank you for sharing!!
This is such a great program!! I think we often take for granted how lucky we are! It’s easy to think ‘never happen to me’, when really, it can. Everyone should give what they can, when they can 😉
I always love to hear about programs like this. Education is the foundation of a successful future, and some kids don’t have everything they need to learn.
What an awesome program! We will for sure be donating when we go back to school shopping!
What a really great program! It’s nice to see people helping people out, seems so rare these days!
I send in extra supplies with my son at the beginning of the year with a note for the teacher to keep them for classroom use or children who don’t have any.
I think that’s great you give to a needy family in your neighborhood every year. Way to keep good going!
I often buy extra and leave it with the office at my childrens school. I find they know who needs what and will distribute as needed
I know exactly this feeling and have witnessed it myself! I try to help where I can so less fortunate kids get something for school.
What a great cause! I’m so glad to see these campaigns where we are helping kids in need!
I’m headed into Walmart later today. I think I’ll drop some stuff off in the bins!
I can’t believe it is time to go back to school already. I’ll be stopping by walmart and donating!
I love back to school because I get to donate all the massive amounts of items I have received as a blogger tat I have no use for, but the school always loves! Thanks for sharing this!
Those are all such great ideas! It’s not too hard to grab a few extra school supplies to donate, we should all be doing it!
What great ideas, I love giving back supplies to kids. No kid should be without. I really like Walmarts plan, easy to donate while shopping.
Such a wonderful program. Whenever we have things like this in our community, I always give back! Love to!
That is such a great program,I wish I could find something like that over here I would love to be able to donate stuff to help kids that need it.
Such great ideas! We donate extras right to the classrooms and the teachers offer them to kids in need.
Champions for Kids is such a great program. No child should ever go hungry.
Great ideas… I like the ding dong ditch. There are probably a lot of people who could really use the help but are too proud to ask. This would be a good solution for some of those families.
Such a great program for helping children in need. Our church collects backpacks for kids!
All of our local supermarkets offer programs where you can donate supplies. We always donate to them. I filled a whole backpack this year with school supplies to donate!
These are such great ideas. I love what Champions for Kids does. Our church collects donations and it is so nice to be able to help whenever we can.
Such great programs! I love that we can help out other kids and our schools with Champions for kids. Learning is so important and making sure they have the needed supplies is crucial.
I love these ideas, and I love that you’re instilling the value of helping others into your kids! In our own struggle to keep everything afloat, we sometimes forget that there are others who are much worse off than we are. Great post!
These are all great ideas and programs. My husband works in the schools. We’ve invested a lot of money the past several years to help students who can’t afford everything.
I donate to my boys classroom when I can. I know the teachers can’t supply everything out of their own pockets.
I think it’s great that there are programs to help kids who don’t get enough to eat. No one in this country should have to be hungry.
That is a wonderful program and I will definitely be participating. It breaks my heart to think there are kids out there going hungry.