Five Below has been incredibly supportive of PCF by organizing two separate customer donation drives at various Philadelphia area locations. Altogether, these drives have amounted to several thousand dollars in toys and much needed supplies. Earlier this year, the Easter drive was a huge success which enabled several schools to create incentive programs aimed at improving behavior among students.
Most recently, Justin Strycharz and regional manager Craig Ridgell once again organized a customer donation drive, this time for back-to-school supplies. All in all, we received several carloads of basic supplies including notepads, pens/pencils, backpacks, crayons, glue sticks, etc. See the photos below.
The Philadelphia Children’s Foundation sorted the goods and distributed them to several schools in underserved neighborhoods including Steel, Emlen, Houston, Logan and Duckrey, a new school we are working with in North Philadelphia.
Here is one of the Thank You letters we received:
Dear Five Below and the Philadelphia Children’s Foundation,
Thank you so much for the generous donation of school supplies to our school. Many of our students come from families who are unable to provide school supplies for them during the year. We will be using your donated supplies in each and every classroom, kindergarten through 8th grade, to make sure that our students have everything they need to be successful. We are excited to start the school year off with enough supplies for our children!
Shinika S.C.
Classroom Teacher
On behalf of all the other schools we work with and their students, we want to thank Five Below and their customers. Many of these schools lack these types of basic supplies and, in some cases, forcing teachers to fend for themselves (and out of their own pockets).
Just like the Easter drive, Five Below‘s Craig was tireless in collecting the boxes (and boxes) of donated goods from their regional stores and bringing them to centralized locations for PCF to pick up. Thanks again!
