Prepping for Back to School: Kids Spend Last Days of Summer Volunteering to Help Donate Backpacks

Getting ready for the first day of school for a lot of kids means going shopping—for a new backpack, school supplies and more.

Danville sisters Madi and Kinsey Mascali, students at Valley Christian in Dublin, however, know that some kids' parents may not have the money to buy them all new school supplies. The sisters formed their group, Packs with Love, to help those kids get ready for the first day of school.

"We wanted to do something to help the kids feel good about themselves," said Kinsey, 10, who organized Packs with Love with 13-year-old Madi in February 2006.

The group donates gently used and new backpacks filled with school supplies like glue sticks, crayons, markers, notebooks and rulers, to kids in the Richmond School District, Contra Costa County (through a program called Shelter Inc.), a program called Teen Challenge in the Bay Area, and the Open Arms orphanage in Mexico.

The girls' mother, Carol Mascali, a life-long volunteer, wanted to teach her daughters about helping people less fortunate than themselves at a young age, taking them to cook meals at a shelter in San Jose.

It was when the girls saw kids walking to school in Richmond without backpacks, that they had the idea to help kids by giving them backpacks.

The sisters met with the Richmond School District in February 2006, to see how they could help, giving Packs with Love its start.

Most of the backpacks come from donations collected in a box outside the Mascali's home. This year, the manager of Walgreens on Diablo Road in Danville donated some 30 backpacks, the first large donation from a business.

Last year they donated 300 backpacks.

Although supplies were lower this year, because as Madi said, a lot of kids are keeping their backpacks from last year and aren't donating them, the program is not only helping kids who are less fortunate, but also teaching local kids about the importance of volunteer work.

The sisters enlisted the help of a group of girls from the neighborhood around Dunhill Drive on Tuesday morning, to fill-up the backpacks and tie notes for the kids on the outside of the backpacks.

The backpacks were laid out on the driveway of the Mascali home as the sisters, their mom and the group of eager volunteers, mostly girls from Creekside Elementary, got the packs ready to deliver in time for the first day of school.

Said Kinsey: "Kids can help with something they can feel good about for the rest of their lives."