THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 2, 1994 TAG: 9409300252
SECTION: CHESAPEAKE CLIPPER PAGE: 20 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY PATRICIA HUANG, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Short : 48 lines
FOR BARBARA THOMPSON, the beginning of the school year every fall means it's time to buy new books, clothes, shoes, pens, calculators and other supplies.
Thompson prepares children for school, even though she has no school-age children of her own. She and her associates administer a program through the Chesapeake Department of Social Services program called ``Back to School.''
This year the program helped 86 of the city's children stock up with such things as clean, unmarked spiral notebooks and newly sharpened pencils. TCI of Virginia, a local cable television company, also contributed this fall with a $1,000 donation, which helped about 20 students. A portion of the donation was matched by Operation Blessing.
Although Thompson, president of the College Park Square Merchants Association, and her colleagues are on the other side of the city border in Virginia Beach, they see Chesapeake literally across the street from their shopping center.
``As I look out my door, it's Chesapeake,'' Thompson said from her College Park pet-grooming store. ``We (the merchants association) were looking for a project . . . and it dawned on us that we could make more of an impact in Chesapeake.'' Several Virginia Beach merchants associations were already helping kids in that city, so Thompson and her colleagues decided to look elsewhere.
It has been eight years since the association first approached Chesapeake's Department of Social Services with an offer to help, and the businesses have made a donation every year since.
Children who benefit from the program come from families that are clients of the city's Social Services Department. The families receive letters that tell them where they can shop for free school supplies. Department stores, such as Rose's, are given the names of families allowed to purchase $50 in back-to-school merchandise.
``We make every effort to protect their self-esteem,'' Thompson said. ``It's important to maintain the families' dignity.''
Many times the children receiving the social services donations aren't even made aware of it, said Debbie Lewis, project coordinator for Social Services. ``We keep it very low-key,'' Thompson said. by CNB