- By Dan Veaner
- Around Town
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Margaret Shackell-Dowell
Shackell-Dowell is heading the 'Pack a Backpack' drive to collect school supplies at Lansing High School on August 23rd. That coincides with Lansing Harbor Festival, and with the high school parking lot being used for a 'park and ride' access to the festival, she hopes that revellers will stop by between 9:30am to 12:30pm to drop off supplies on their way to Myers Park.
Shackell-Dowell got the idea in South Bend, Indiana, where she and her husband worked at the University of Notre Dame. Local television station WNDU asked for school supplies for kids in their ten-county broadcast area, and thousands of donors responded. In the seven years they have sponsored the event the station has distributed over 25,000 backpacks filled with school supplies to K-6th grade children.
When the family moved to Lansing last year Shackell-Dowell became active in the PTSO. When she suggested the idea other PTSO members liked it, deciding to distribute donated supplies to Lansing kids in K-12. She says that close to 40 people have signed up to help, coming from church youth groups, CASS, and sports teams. The supplies will be sorted according to what each school has requested, then given to the school nurse or counselor that has been chosen to distribute the supplies in each of the three schools. That person will give out the backpacks and supplies confidentially so there will be no stigma attached to receiving them.
While she says that scheduling the drop-off day on the same day as harbor Festival was a coincidence, it can only help the drive as thousands come to attend the festival. Lansing high and elementary school parking lots are being used for additional parking because the spaces in Myers Park fill up quickly. School busses will be shuttling to the park constantly throughout the day.
Shackell-Dowell is asking for backpacks, pens, 3 ring binders, loose leaf paper, spiral notebooks, yellow #2 pencils, erasers, glue sticks, composition notebooks, 24 box of crayons, 24 pack of colored, pencils, 8 pack of classic, color markers, small box to hold supplies, scissors, pocket folders, dry eraser markers, USB drives.
"I'm hoping that we'll get 40 backpacks and about that for supplies," she says. "We would prefer new. Gently new would be fine, but we don't want these students to feel that they're getting hand-me-downs. We want that same pride the first day."
If 'Pack a Backpack' is a success, Shackell-Dowell says she hopes it will become an annual event. "We'd like everybody to do it," she says. "If you brought a pad of paper and I brought pencils we can spread it out and get everybody involved. I think public education depends so much on everybody contributing, because we're all the beneficiaries."
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