How $15 school backpacks help Detroit families in need

Kylie Martin, Detroit Free Press
Updated ·2 min read

In 2017, Maria Sanchez was worried she had to choose between buying back-to-school supplies for her three children or putting food on the table. The Backpacks For Dreams drive helped her do both.

Sanchez, a now-36-year-old Detroit resident, had been using Southwest Counseling Solutions outpatient therapy services for two years, whose programs and support groups helped with her depression, anxiety, and other pains of daily life.

Through Southwest Solution’s Children, Youth and Family Services, Sanchez learned of the Backpacks for Dreams drive, which helps provide backpacks and school supplies to children across Detroit. Income was a struggle for Sanchez and her husband, and having backpacks supplied to her three daughters was an immense help. The family went back to the Backpacks for Dreams drive and Southwest Solutions over the next several years as the children progressed through school.

Maria Sanchez, 36, of Detroit, stands with two of her three kids: Danna Sanchez, 19, and Daleyza Sanchez, 6, inside Southwest Solutions in Detroit on Thursday, July 13, 2023. Sanchez has been volunteering at Southwest Solutions since 2015 and has taken advantage of their services for her family including their “Backpacks for Dreams” drive that gives backpacks filled with school supplies to children across Detroit who need them so parents can use the money they would have spent on school supplies for other bills like food and rent.

Now, six years later, Sanchez seeks to give back to the organization just as much as they gave to her and her family, by volunteering at Southwest Solutions’ backpack distribution event, the Back to School Bash.

“When you don’t have anything, you become depressed, and your self-esteem comes down. When they started helping me, my self-esteem came up. That’s why I like to help out, to help parents to get backpacks so their self-esteem can come up,” Sanchez said, through translation by Claudia Bravo-Sanchez.

The Backpacks for Dreams drive is a partnership between Southwest Solutions, a Detroit-based nonprofit, and Family Alliance for Change, Youth United and the Detroit Wayne Integrated Health Network. By providing children with the materials they need, children can focus on their achieving their dreams instead of struggling with a lack of much-needed school supplies, while parents can focus on providing more basic necessities for their children.

Each backpack or set of school supplies is less than $15 apiece — and to families in need, every penny counts.

Southwest Solutions hopes to provide at least 1,300 sets of backpacks and school supplies to elementary, middle and high school students across Detroit to get them through the 2023-24 school year.

School supplies will be distributed at a to-be-announced location during the annual Back to School Bash on Aug. 18.

The deadline to donate is next Monday. As of now, over 1,300 backpacks and sets of school supplies are still needed.

How to donate

It's as simple as any online shopping site: Go to Roonga, add the wish-listed items to your cart, then check out and watch the “still needed” count go down, knowing that your donation is going to help children in need.

For more information, go to Backpacks for Dreams Drive or contact Laura LeBlanc, executive director of philanthropy and communications for Southwest Solutions, at lleblanc@swsol.org.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Backpacks For Dreams: How $15 backpacks help Detroit families in need