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$47,000 worth of school supplies

Author: Brandon Feller • Published: 07/31/2015

So how'd we do it?! Great partners, of course! Delaware City Schools was once again a phenomenal partner with dozens of district staff involved. It also took a little money...ok, a lot of money and our largest cash sponsor was the United Way Women's Leadership Network with a gift of $15,000! Thank you so much to our other cash sponsors including: Nationwide (Westerville office), DCS staff, Delaware Pediatric Dentistry, Delaware Family Dental and many individual donors.

Supply drives were held at: Delaware Pediatric Dentistry, Delaware Family Dental, JC Penney, Girl Scouts of Ohio's Heartland, Optimal Eye Care, Nationwide Insurance, Westfield Insurance, DCB, DCBDD, Kiwanis Clubs of Delaware County, Domtar, Sears, Delaware Grace, Delaware City Schools and Delaware PD. Other drives that we weren't aware of also pitched in!

We had awesome stylists from JC Penney and Great Clips that donated their time to give 90 haircuts- a gift that literally brought some families to tears.

We had our amazing public safety leaders on hand to greet shoppers including Sheriff Martin, Police Chief Pijanowski, Fire Chief Donahue and County Prosecutor Carol O'Brien. We had officers that helped kids shop. We had a mounted deputy there with his horse. And we had an impressive display of military equipment from our friends at the Ohio National Guard.

We had many great organizations there to serve families such as: Big Brothers Big Sisters, Girl Scouts, Delaware Speech & Hearing Center, Common Ground Free Store Ministries, the Literacy Coalition of Delaware County, the 2nd & 7 Foundation, KONA Ice and several others!

We had amazing volunteers from our workplace partners and community volunteers organized perfectly by Connections Volunteer Center!

Our United Way staff lead and "man with the mic" this year was Chris Elliott. Well done.

This was truly a community event. Heck, we even borrowed tents from LSS Food Pantries! We really could not have done it without all the partners named and likely several unintentionally omitted.

If you shopped, volunteered, donated or had anything at all to do with ‪#‎supplies4scholars THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!!!!

For video coverage of the event, check out our Supplies for Scholars page.