On May 13, First Niagara presented Cradles to Crayons with a $5,000 grant to support their Ready for School program. Ready for School focuses on the school preparedness of young children by fully equipping them with clothing for school together with backpacks filled with school supplies.
The majority of backpacks are filled at the region’s largest annual back-to-school event, the Backpack-A-Thon, which brings nearly 500 volunteers to Lincoln Financial Field to fill 30,000 backpacks for distribution before the start of the school year. School supplies distributed must be brand new and are replenished throughout the year as needed, as many as three to four times.
As a component of Ready for School, in September 2014, Cradles to Crayons launched a pilot program, Take A Book Home, for students enrolled at the Thomas M. Peirce elementary school. Through this program, students are invited to select three age appropriate books per year to keep and share with siblings. The program encourages reading readiness and has been enthusiastically received by school personnel.
The mission of Cradles to Crayons is to help mitigate the devastating effects of family poverty by providing children with the essential items they need to thrive at home, at school and at play. Cradles to Crayons is a community and volunteer-driven organization that provides basic essentials like clothing, shoes, books and school supplies free of charge to financially impoverished families with children from birth to age twelve residing in Greater Philadelphia (Bucks, Chester, Delaware, Montgomery and Philadelphia Counties) and Camden, New Jersey to support the activities of Everyday Essentials, a program that distributes desperately-needed KidPacks to thousands of children annually.
