Assistance League’s Receiving Center Backpacks Empower the Vulnerable

At a recent Assistance League® Diablo Valley regular monthly meeting, Receiving Center Backpacks Program Chair Susan Petersdorf shared information as to how Aspiranet accommodates children and teens who have been removed from their homes due to family crisis. Since 1975, Aspiranet has become one of California’s largest and most successful social service organizations.

The facilities have received children and teens, often wearing no shoes and only the clothes on their backs. Caretakers welcome them while social workers find foster home placement for them in a 24-36 hour time frame.

Assistance League Diablo Valley’s Receiving Center Backpacks volunteers are scheduled in early December to fill a backpack for each recipient scheduled for foster care. Each backpack will contain new clothing, specifically tee shirts, a sweatshirt, pants, socks and underwear. Also included are a Wellness Kit, consisting of a toothbrush, hairbrush, coloring book and crayons, a flashlight, and starting this year, shoes and diapers (when appropriate) for children and teens. The sad reality is that infants and toddlers sometime arrive wearing nothing.

Ms. Petersdorf concluded with a Receiving Center Backpack display and a sign-up sheet for an assembly in early December to fill 120 backpacks for children ages 6 to11 and 40 backpacks for toddlers ages 2 to 5. Imagine the joy it will bring to recipient and volunteer, alike.

To learn about other joyous opportunities and how Assistance League Thrift Shop, located next to the Park Theater in Lafayette provides funding for them, please visit: assistanceleague.org/diablo-valley.