This past Friday, Aug. 3, Sunnyvale Community Services (SCS) held its annual “Head-to-Toe: Backpack Day,” a back-to-school event that distributes backpacks, school supplies, gift certificates for new shoes, books, dental hygiene kits and bags of nutritious food to 1,800 low-income Sunnyvale school children.
SCS (www.svcommunityservices.org) is a private, nonprofit emergency assistance agency that works to prevent homelessness and hunger for low-income families in the local community. SCS provides financial aid, food and nutrition programs and case management for families and individuals including veterans, along with referrals to relevant benefits and services.
Sunnyvale Mayor Glenn Hendricks, Vice Mayor Larry Klein, City Council Member Gustav Larsson, U.S. Congressman Ro Khanna and over a dozen Public Safety Officers all attended Backpack Day to show their support of this important program.
The program’s premier sponsors were The Sares Regis Group of Northern California (SRGNC) Education and Community Foundation and Hunter Storm, who together reached out to business partners working on CityLine Sunnyvale and other projects to raise a total of $150,000.
This commitment comes from an ongoing collaboration between SRGNC, Hunter Storm and the City of Sunnyvale to develop CityLine Sunnyvale, a multi-phase redevelopment project over 36 acres in the heart of downtown Sunnyvale.
“We are extremely grateful to Sares Regis for reaching out to its wide network and helping us to meet our ambitious financial goal for Backpack Day this year,” says Marie
Bernard, Executive Director of SCS. “The rising cost of housing, food, transportation, and medical expenses in Silicon Valley is putting extreme financial distress on families, many of whom are working multiple minimum-wage jobs or living on fixed incomes. With this generous donation, Sares Regis and the CityLine Sunnyvale team have more than earned its Premier Program Sponsor title for this year’s Backpack Day.”
The Head-to-Toe: Backpack Day program is part of SCS’s mission to prevent homelessness and hunger in the local community. Over 15 volunteers from SRGNC and the Cityline Sunnyvale team were on hand to help distribute backpacks and supplies to children during Friday’s all-day event.
“Seeing the excitement in these kids’ faces as they picked out their new backpacks was extremely rewarding for us,” says David N.P. Hopkins, Chief Operating Officer at SRGNC. “We’re proud to give back to our own community in this way, as it’s something that is an integral part of our Foundation and who we are. We established this Foundation with the goal of giving back to the communities in which we live and work, and we’re grateful that we’ve been given the opportunity to make a difference for so many children living in Sunnyvale.”
This year, a Sunnyvale fire truck, Sharkie from the San Jose Sharks, Belle and the Beast from Beauty and the Beast and the Paw Patrol all stopped by throughout the day to bring extra smiles to children’s faces while they selected their backpack for the new school year. For a complete list of firms who have partnered in this donation, visit the SCS 2018 Backpack Day donor website.