Purchasing school supplies can be expensive, but for some students in financial need at a few of Evesham’s elementary schools, help this year came in the form of Evesham resident and potential Eagle Scout Everett Minchew.
Minchew, age 17, is a senior at Camden Catholic High School and member of Boy Scout Troop 100 of Marlton.
For his Eagle Scout service project, Minchew spent the last two weekends of August collecting school supplies from local stores to donate to kids at Evans, Jaggard and Marlton elementary schools who needed assistance purchasing supplies for the upcoming school year.
Minchew and fellow Scouts from his troop stood outside a Walmart with fliers explaining who he was, what he was doing, and listing the various supplies the students at the different schools needed.
From the donations he collected, Minchew said he was able to give the three schools 37 backpacks filled with supplies to be handed over to the kids who needed them the most.
“It’s just like a feeling I’ve never gotten before,” Minchew said. “I know that 100 percent helped them out, and they have what they need. It just feels great. I know if I was in their shoes, and I was a kid whose family didn’t have the money to buy supplies, and I got all this top-notch stuff — it’s like a feeling that nothing else could give you.”
However, despite the project’s happy ending, Minchew said he did face some challenges during the collection.
First, not every store Minchew contacted would allow him to solicit shoppers outside of their stores.
“I contacted Target, Walmart, ShopRite and Staples, and it turned out that Walmart was the only store that gave me permission to have me and my fellow Scouts stand outside and solicit,” Minchew said.
Yet even then, Minchew said the other three stores were still able to help the project.
“It was ‘OK, how can I take it the next step further,’ and I figured I might as well ask them for a donation of some sort, and I ended up getting a donation from all three stores in the form of a gift card or check,” Minchew said.
And even when Minchew had the supplies, he said the most stressful part of the project was yet to come when he had to organize and categorize what he had collected to make sure the right supplies got to the right kids at the right school.
“Organizing everything — it had to the hardest part of the project,” Minchew said. “Organizing not only the supplies I obtained into groups of those individual supplies, but making sure I followed everything and the right supplies went to the right kids.”
As for the students who received the supplies and their parents, principals at the schools report they were extremely appreciative.
“I had a lot of parents on the other end of that phone that were extremely appreciative,” said Evans Elementary principal Nicholas DiBlasi. “There were tears in their eyes, because what are school supplies now? $50, $60 depending on the grade? It’s crazy.”
Marlton Elementary School principal Julio Feldman, an Eagle Scout himself, echoed DiBlasi’s sentiments.
“He went out and he got the supplies, and he delivered them, and I just thought it was a very worthwhile project and the recipients of the backpacks are greatly appreciative,” Feldman said. “It’s very nice to see.”
Looking back on his completed project, Minchew said he was happy with the way things turned out.
“Overall, the whole project, it went a lot better than I expected it to go,” Minchew said.” I got way more supplies than I thought I would, and it really surprised me how much I got, but by the way the teachers reacted, I felt that they were happy with my work, and after everything was over I was pretty happy with the outcome that came about.”
