CHICAGO (WBBM NEWSRADIO) — As the start of school approaches, hundreds of volunteers gathered in the South Loop Wednesday morning to pack up school supplies for Chicago students.
“We are at Wintrust Arena, where we are going to pack 35,000 backpacks with over 700 volunteers,” said organizer Dawn Melchiorre.
Melchiorre is the executive director of the nonprofit Cradles to Crayons Chicago, which hosted its ninth annual Backpack-A-Thon at Wintrust Arena.
“Our focus is really on ensuring that kids who are living in homeless or low-income situations have the supplies they need to be ready for school on Day One,” Melchiorre said.
Volunteers from over 30 companies were helping out, including Andrew Rio.
“It's a huge impact, especially because [for] a lot of teachers, a lot of students, it's affordability,” Rio said. “They don't have the option to spend as much money on supplies, so the fact that we're doing this today is really, really cool.”
The event is part of Cradles to Crayons' annual Ready for Learning initiative, which, in total, donates over 105,000 backpacks to Chicago kids.
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