Hundreds of Lebanon students receive free supplies at back-to-school festival

Hundreds of Lebanon residents gathered in the parking lot of the YMCA Train Depot Saturday morning for fun, food and free school supplies at the back-to-school festival.

The festival, organized by Making a Difference of Lebanon, United Way of Lebanon County and the Lebanon Valley YMCA, ran from 9 a.m. until noon. Guests, however, began forming a large line earlier than that while organizers were setting up.

"There's a lot of kids in Lebanon City that start the first day of school and don't have what they need," said Amy Pennycoff, director of community engagement at the YMCA. "That's as simple as pencils, backpacks, any of those things. Our goal in this event is to make sure every child has a little bit of what they need, so they don't feel different, they don't feel insecure about that fact that they're going to school without anything and all these other kids have all this stuff."

Roughly two dozen additional tables, set up by organizations like SARCC, LCCM, UPMC and WellSpan Health, handed out everything from community resources for students, clothes and additional school supplies.

Other organizations, like the Lebanon Salvation Army, served food. Some offered free games in which students could win prizes.

Bert Miuccio, executive director of United Way of Lebanon County, estimated that roughly 650 students received free school supplies during the event.

"There's about 10% of the population in Lebanon County that lives at or below the federal poverty level," Miuccio said. "But there's another approximately 30% that live at a level that is referred to as A.L.I.C.E.," or asset limited, income constrained, employed.

A.L.I.C.E. refers to families and individuals whose income exceeds the federal poverty level, but who still struggle to pay for basic needs. Miuccio puts the percentage of people in Lebanon County who are struggling to make ends meet at 30% to 40%.

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"It's not just people who are disabled or unemployed, it's people who are working, families who have maybe multiple people in the family who are employed, but are just really struggling to make ends meet," he said.

According to the ALICE report that was released in fall 2022, 31% of children in Lebanon County are within the A.L.I.C.E. threshold and 20% of children are at or below the federal poverty level.

"It's beautiful, it's awesome. It's what we need more of. We need more of the community," said Sean Nagel, who was at the event with his son, Tyten. "Just think: If we'd all be in unity, where's the room for us to get discouraged with one another and try to bring each other down, you know what I mean? We're building each other up and encouraging one another. That's where the peace comes from, true peace."

The weekend before the festival, United Way held its annual Stuff the Bus school supply drive, where thousands of school supplies were collected for hundreds of community members across the county.

Hundreds of Vans backpacks were donated and handed out by the Vanity Fair Volunteer Committee, which also had a separate tent set up for students to play a game and win a pair of Vans socks.

Virtually all of the items that had been donated for Stuff the Bus had been distributed only a couple of hours into the festival. By about 10 a.m., the rooms used for storage, packed to the door leading up to event, had been all but cleared out.

Between collecting school supplies from the various tables, families talked to each other, children ran around and played in the two bounce houses, enjoying free popcorn, hotdogs and refreshments.

Fernando Melendez was at the event with two of his youngest children. He said they came out for the community aspect, to meet the people helping others.

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"I like to come out to see the camaraderie and the community," he said, "It's actually really good to see everyone getting along here, to see how powerful and how much respect people have for each other in the community here. No matter what goes on every day, people can come together here and see what they have as far as resources."

Melendez believes events like the back-to-school festival are crucial not just for community building, but also for relief for families that might be struggling.

"The outcome and turnout of this, is awesome," Melendez said. "I think this is probably one of the biggest ones I've seen since maybe three or four years ago."

A bit past 10:30 a.m., the deejay cut the music for raffle ticket giveaways which included several board games given away by Cornell Wilson of Making a Difference of Lebanon and a custom lowrider bike built by Pedro Cartagena, owner of Chino Bicicleta.

Daniel Larlham Jr. is a reporter for the Lebanon Daily News. Reach him at DLarlham@LDNews.com or on X, formerly twitter @djlarlham

This article originally appeared on Lebanon Daily News: Bags, pencils, notebooks, more given at Lebanon back-to-school fest