This July we kicked off our new supply drive initiative, The Pencil Push Program. This is a year round event with three distinct timeframes— our back-to-school drive, the mid-year healthy student restock, and our second semester support.
The goal of this program is to activate the community to collect top needed items for students and teachers. These needs can change throughout the school year. Organizations are encouraged to set out collection boxes or raise financial donations for the duration of the event, then are able to come drop off their supplies at our 10th Street location. November marks the beginning of the Healthy Student Mid Year restock. We encourage you to work with your teams to collect health and hygiene items that will keep our teachers and students happy and healthy throughout the winter! Check out our wish list here.
We’re proud to announce that we had over 40 organizations participate and collected over 15,000 school supplies items with an additional $17,000 raised!
If you were to drive by Teachers’ Treasures during a Pencil Push Back-to-School supply drive day, you would probably wonder just what exactly was going in our parking lot.
One car would pull up, overflowing with plastic bags of materials, quickly followed up several more. Out would pop individuals, many wearing branded company t-shirts, and a flurry of activity would begin. Groups would start unloading their backseats and trunks, pulling out item after item. You’d be surprised at just how many glue sticks a car can fit if you watched closely enough! You might even spy some colorful Lisa Frank folders peaking out amongst the treasures, their colorful tigers and dolphins taking you back to your own school days. Maybe you would see teams pose for selfies with packs of pencils; you might even see a collection bin break under the weight of items an office spent weeks collecting! You would see handshakes and laughter, and maybe a teary eye or two, as a community came together from all over the city to support Back-to-School.
Maybe you would then simply drive off, smiling as you remember the smell of pencils that your teacher always seemed to have sharpened and ready for you when you were in school. Or maybe you would feel inspired to learn more about what you had just seen. How could you and your groups come together to be one of those cars? Just how many notebooks and boxes of tissue could your backseat hold?
Because if you were to drive by Teachers’ Treasures during a drop off day what you would really see is a community coming together from all over the city to uplift and support our educators and students, one carload at a time, one pencil-at-a-time, and one caring heart at a time.
Thank you to everyone who participated this year—we especially want to give a special thanks to DHL Supply Chain and Cherry Bekaert. DHL collected more than 3,000 items to donate and Cherry Bekaert raised over $6,000!
We also want to give a special shout out to Kroger for their Pretzels to Pencils supply drive! We partnered with 15 Kroger locations around Indianapolis to collect school supplies and shelf stable snacks for teachers to use in their classrooms. Kroger shoppers could purchase these items then drop them off at the collection bins stationed by the doors on their way out.
