The Johnson family wakes at 6:30 a.m. in their shared room at Cornerstone Community Outreach. Michelle and Anthony help their children start their day: a high schooler, middle schooler and an elementary school student. After a quick breakfast in the cafeteria, the children bring their new backpack and supplies to school with bus passes provided by CCO. When the children come home, they are greeted with a snack, a safe space to reset and do homework. Finally, they are served a nutritious meal and are free to spend the evening with their family, preparing for the next day.
For 35+ years, Cornerstone Community Outreach has provided safe housing and 3 meals daily to thousands of families and individuals. We support clients with a network of medical, job, and educational resources with the ultimate goal being their achieving permanent housing and a thriving life. This isn’t all, though – Cornerstone believes in the impact of the “little things” – a new backpack, a fun water bottle, a cool pair of shoes – the things that might seem like afterthoughts in the largeness of life but that actually make a huge difference in the day-to-day. For kids, for all of us.
Children experiencing homelessness can often feel high levels of social pressure to hide this fact. One of the ways in which we support our children comprehensively is through our back-to-school-program. By providing each child with new and high quality shoes, socks, underwear, backpacks, and supplies, we find that children enter the new school year with more confidence and excitement than before. Many of us know from experience that the clothes you wear can majorly impact confidence in social settings, and school is an especially important social setting. We take a multifaceted approach: not merely providing for the most basic physical needs of an individual, but also with an awareness of the significance of a person’s emotional state, in the moment and as it affects their future.
This August, CCO’s back-to-school planning team served children at the shelter by providing them with supplies and clothing to start their school year off well, in addition to celebrating their return to school with a party to kick off the year. We provided each of the ~100 school-age children at the shelter with a backpack, water bottle, school supplies, shoes, socks, and underwear. We celebrated them with games, food, and entertainment on the day of our party. This boosts morale for the kids and for the parents. Half the people on the dance floor are the moms.
Recently, a client told us that no matter how tired she is, she brings her 5 kids to every event that Cornerstone hosts, because she knows that it makes a difference for them. It relieves significant stress for parents to know that their children are being looked out for by the community at large, and that the students will start their school year with clean, new clothes and supplies.
We want you to be a part of this! We’ve seen some amazingly creative fundraisers (in 2024, our friends at Tiny Giants Daycare threw the cutest art show ever where parents “bought” their kids art and the proceeds went to Cornerstone), some incredibly generous donors, and some wonderful and hard-working volunteers over the years. Contact a.learmond@ccolife.org or eraedke@ccolife.org or visit our website at ccolife.org to find ways to get involved in Cornerstone’s Back-to-School 2025.