School Supplies for Phokeng Kids - Distribution Day

Last Monday Amy and I went out to Agnes' house in Phokeng to hand out the school supplies.  The kids came after school for their meal and to pick up their school supplies.

Mama Agnes (in the white shirt) lines all of the kids up in order of height, the little ones first, to wash their hands and to get their food each day.

 

  

 Here are Amy, Madison and her friend Grayce, Amy's daughter, serving the kids their meal.

The little ones like to sit on this old spool to eat their meal.  Some of them come on their own to Agnes' house to meet their older brothers and sisters after school.

  

The trunk and the back seat of Amy's car were full of the school supplies.

 It was a little (OK, a lot) chaotic as we tried to separate and organize the supplies for over 60 kids.  Each grade had a different school supply list and some of the kids only needed a few items from their list.  We also had more kids show up than we had purchased for, so we had to go through everything and divide it all up to make sure we had enough for each child.

This is one of the 4 or 5 lists were were working from.  You can see Mama Agnes in the background.

We put the supplies in piles according to grade.

We gave each of the kids a grocery bag and went down the line handing out their supplies.  At one point Amy mentioned that she felt like they were Trick-Or-Treating.  I had thought the same thing!  Many of these kids have never had any school supplies before, so this was a big treat for them!

 

The first graders didn't have a list of supplies, so we didn't buy anything for them.  They waited patiently while we handed out the supplies to all of the other children present.  At the end, they came up to me saying (in their cute broken English) "Grade one?  Grade one?"  I didn't have the heart to tell them that we didn't have anything for them!

I had remembered seeing a bag of new crayon boxes in Mama Agnes' house, so I asked her about them.  Agnes said that they had been donated to her several months before by a group on a missions trip from the US.  Agnes hadn't give them out yet because she said she just knew she was supposed to save them for some reason.

So, we were able to give those little sweeties each a new box of Crayola crayons, and a pencil and eraser that were left over from the older children.

We ran out of a few supplies and needed to buy some more.  On Wednesday, Amy and Mama Agnes went shopping again purchased everything else that was needed.  Even though we didn't raise as much money as we had thought we needed, we were able to purchase everything the kids needed and we actually have a little money left over to help some of the kids buy some new school clothes.

A HUGE thank you to everyone who donated for this!  It was a great day and the kids were so happy and thankful to receive their new supplies.

~Jenny