SI Medway and Maidstone celebrates our 75th anniversary this year. We have set ourselves a series of challenges to achieve. One of these challenge is to fill 75 backpacks. The backpacks are for Mary’s Meals and for girls and boys aged between 4 and 12 years
Many children receiving Mary’s Meals do not have basic learning tools such as pencils and notepads. The backpack project supports them to get the most out of their lessons by donating a backpack full of things they need.
The contents do not need to all be new items but good quality recycled items. We are using summer clothes that grandchildren have outgrown. A local tennis club who donated twenty-five used tennis balls
Annette Davies is the Kent Ambassador for Mary’s Meals. She leads on this project. We had delayed starting on the project due to Mary’s Meals putting a hold on the project during lockdown. However, having been given the all-clear we decided to get stuck in.
In September Wanda Wright kindly hosted a session where nine club members got together on a mammoth filling session. Fifty completed backpacks were brought to our first club meeting since lockdown on 19 October.
Mary’s Meals have announced that due to supply challenges affecting the global shipping industry and higher associated costs, they are unable to transport donated backpacks to Malawi. Their warehouse is at maximum capacity for storing backpacks. They do not know when shipments will resume, so all collections of backpacks are now on hold for the time being.
This news was obviously disappointing to all our members. Mary’s Meals hope to resume backpack collections at the earliest opportunity. This will also give us more time to achieve our target of filling seventy-five backpacks this year.
https://www.marysmeals.org.uk/get-involved/campaigns/the-backpack-project