CHICAGO (WBBM NEWSRADIO) -- Four semi-trucks filled with school supplies lined up outside the Broadway Park Armory early Thursday morning, and a forklift dropped off hundreds of boxes filled with school supply kits for needy kids.
"This is our biggest event of the year. We're giving out 11,000 of our back-to-school kits," Matthew Kurtzman, CEO of Back 2 School Illinois, said. "We've got lots of volunteers working their butts off to give away those kids."
"There are four different kits. Each one is grade appropriate. Each kit has about 30 of what we call your core of basis supplies," Kurtzman explained. "The younger kids will get construction paper and crayons. The older kids will get things like a ruler, protractor, lined paper, notebooks and folders, etc."
Back 2 School is also debuting a new program this year called "Build A Kit," where volunteers assemble 1,000 kits.
"My favorite subject is gym," he said, laughing. "But it's cool that we get these free supplies."
Melanie Sanchez, 11, said her favorite subject is arts and crafts.
"Self-esteem is a huge part of what we do. If you can imagine what it's like to go back to school and you don't have supplies, and you have to ask the teacher or the student next you to borrow the supplies that really doesn't set a student up for learning," he said.
Since its inception in 2005, 225,000 kits have been given away to low-income children. Kurtzman says they are expanding beyond Illinois.
This is the 14th year of the Back 2 School Illinois school supply giveaway.
