Emma Thomas helps her father fill bookbags with school supplies.
Submitted Photo
CLARKS SUMMIT — Many local children will be ready when the first day of school arrives. Clarks Summit resident Jason Thomas purchased bookbags to donate to families. He also filled them with a variety of school supplies, including pens, pencils, markers, crayons, notebooks, folders and calculators. His daughter, Emma, who will be a sixth-grade student in the Abington Heights district, helps him by deciding what to put in the backpacks as well as packing them.
“She enjoyed doing it,” said Jason. “For her, it wasn’t like a task. It wasn’t a job. That’s what makes me proud of her. She enjoys doing things for others.”
Jason has been doing this project for the past two years. He got the idea at Walmart when he saw two shopping carts filled with bookbags, which were on clearance in the beginning of the school year. He asked the store manager to give him a deal for buying all of them. After conversation, the manager agreed, and Jason was able to start this donation project. He wanted to include items in the bookbags so they wouldn’t be empty.
“I wasn’t sure what to really put in them to make it look decent and to be able to financially afford it, so I took my time buying stuff over the course while finding stuff on sale,” he said.
Jason initially reached out to local schools asking them if they wanted bookbags. He dropped the bookbags to classrooms that wanted them. This year, he is posting an ad on Facebook and plans to let families pick up the bookbags from his office at ERA in Clarks Summit. His manager, Sunita Arora reached out to Jason to help him with the project by funding school supplies to fill the next round of bookbags.
“I felt good knowing that I was helping people that needed it,” he said.
Anyone who needs a bookbag can call Jason at 570-309-1095.
