Back To School Event Makes Sure Kids Are Ready

Lots of students and parents came out to the School Fair this past week held at Penn Central Mall.

Lots of students and parents came out to the School Fair this past week held at Penn Central Mall.

Oskaloosa, Iowa – The Penn Central Mall in Oskaloosa was buzzing with the chatter of excited students, picking up their school supplies for the upcoming school year.

Timothy Gibson with United Way said he was nervous the night before that no one would show up to the backpack event.

Fortunately for Gibson, the crowd was massive, and he says that is exactly what he was hoping would happen.

With more people than originally expected and more vendors than initially signed up, Gibson was pleased that so many options were being made available to Mahaska County families.

For Gibson, the Operation Backpack was one of the first programs he helped to spearhead.

After examining how things were done with the distribution of the backpacks, Gibson started to rethink how the operation might go better, and make more options available to others.

When the process was rethought, income verification was dropped because of the known need of families that are struggling, even above a set income line. “We were missing people. Kind of that population that sits right in between, that can’t get all the services that they need. So I said let’s get rid of that (income verification), let’s do a huge fair, let’s do more than just the backpack because there’s more to going back to school, instead of just a backpack. There’s the haircut, the eye screening, dental, and all of these other things (services) that are included.”

Looking across the bustling crowd, Gibson said he’s excited for how it all turned out.

Posted by on Aug 16 2018. Filed under Local News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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