Early on a Saturday morning, Sammy’s Girls met on the eastside to begin our National DAR Day of Service bright and early. To our surprise, there was a line of teachers waiting outside as the light of day was just beginning to appear. Carrying our boxes of donated items, we were eager to get in and show how much we appreciated these educators.

As Education is one of the three pillars of DAR, we were proud to be able to fulfill this goal for our local DAR chapter. Founders Day, as we like to refer to this activity, is an annual activity to honor the anniversary of DAR’s founding on October 11th. Chapters and individuals engage in meaningful service projects in their communities each year. Sammy’s Girls chose to support the organization Teachers’ Treasures this year. As we are a group of innovative women who love to think outside the box, this activity was two-fold for us.

 

Teachers’ Treasurers obtains and distributes school supplies free to Marion County teachers of students in need. Yes, you read that right, FREE.  This wonderful organization could not serve Indy’s teachers without generous help and support from the community. That is us.

 

As I mentioned previously, we carried in boxes of school supplies, teacher aids, books, toys, etc. The project impact sees how these were the exact things that the teachers were going to be able to get for free to support the children in their classrooms without them having to spend their own personal funds to teach. These supplies were collected and donated by chapter members all year long and brought to our chapter meetings.

 

We met our Teachers Treasurers workers who quickly got us acclimated to the store and explained what our volunteer hours were going to encompass. A few ladies were to greet the teachers who came in and they would check all of those who pre-registered for the shopping event. The other volunteers would be on the opposite end stocking shelves and  “checking them out” by collecting their shopping list and entering the items collected for the store inventory data. These teachers were so appreciative for all of the items they could take with them and put to good use. We even saw huge boxes of hangers that just about every teacher grabbed 20 or so. Who knew that would be a popular item they needed. Cleaning supplies, books, paper shredders, games, play tea sets, boo-boo bears, and anything else you can think of from pre-K to high school was in this store. Eli Lilly even donated used/test tubes and other laboratory equipment for them to use!

 

Thank you to supply donating chapter members, and Kim S., Elaine R., Paula K., Patti and (Hodar) On M. for donating your time and representing the chapter in a big way with these teachers on October 14th. We even got a few teachers interested in our chapter reenactors coming to their classrooms.

 

Those who volunteered all made the comment that “we want to do this again.” Come join us and see what a huge impact we can make!