By Paul Gottbrath
Northern Kentucky Harvest
The sun had not yet made its appearance but already a mother and her two children were waiting.
It was Aug. 10, distribution day for Northern Kentucky Harvest’s 2024 Backpacks Bonanza, and volunteers were pulling onto the parking lot at St. Elizabeth Healthcare Covington to set up. Having heard in passing about the school supply giveaway – the largest and longest-running this side of the Ohio River – the mother didn’t know whether her children had had to be registered ahead of time, so she’d woken them before dawn.
When told that it was a first-come, first-served event, and that she would be first in line to get backpacks, her and her children’s faces lit up with smiles. The kids were so excited that they spent the next two hours helping volunteers put water and ice in coolers, unfold chairs, tape up signs, and take filled backpacks out of garbage bags and set them on tables.
Their enthusiasm was indicative of the scene that day, when families from across Northern Kentucky – some with a single child, some with five or six – came to get their free backpacks.
Recipients included children preschool through 12th grade, and the list was diverse:
• Students from 15 school districts and 37 communities.
• Nearly 40 percent from Covington but also from as far away as Grant, Pendleton, and Gallatin counties.
• Primarily public school students but also some from Catholic schools and one home-schooled student.
• And even a non-traditional student who had recently arrived from Africa and was in dire need of school supplies to continue his education.
During the week leading up to distribution day, about 300 backpacks were given out through five partnering agencies: the Esperanza Latino Center in Covington, The ION Center for Violence Protection (formerly the Women’s Crisis Center), Catholic Charities, Welcome House, and ReSet, which helps families of those newly released from incarceration.
In fact, volunteers that day ran out of backpacks. Undeterred, they wrote down names and drove around the region the next day buying 23 more backpacks and filling them. In all, 1,181 backpacks full of supplies were given out, a record for the event. An additional two dozen families reached out for help and were given supplies from a list of 28 items, including notebooks, scribble pads, filler paper, folders, pens, markers, crayons, glue, and erasers.
In 2025, Backpacks Bonanza – formerly Backpacks & Breakfast – will be even better.
To celebrate the 25th year of the giveaway, Northern Kentucky Harvest will provide 1,250 backpacks – 50 for each year the project has operated – on Aug. 9 during a first-come, first-served event. That will represent a new record and bring the total number of backpacks distributed since 2001 to more than 19,000.
It takes a village
More details will be released leading up to that date, but as always the Backpacks Bonanza will be a monumental undertaking relying on the generosity of donors and the time and energy of many dozens of volunteers. Backpacks are separated into six grade categories, and each category is packed with its own assortment of supplies.
But if there is anything that rivals the smile on the face of a kid who now – with shiny new pens, markers, and folders in hand – is excited about returning to school, it’s the faces of the adults who make that possible.
Groups who had a hand in Backpacks Bonanza 2024 included Emburse, Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Alpha Psi Lamda and Kappa Alpha Psi fraternities, the Linstead family, and the City of Covington, as well as Brighton Center, Be Concerned, the Covington Rotary, and teachers and staff from Covington Holmes Middle School.
Be Concerned provided warehouse space, trucks, communications help, and tables and canopies for the event, and St. Elizabeth allowed the of use of its campus.
The 2024 event was funded by:
• R.C. Durr Foundation
• The Butler Foundation
• Covington Rotary Club
• Sofagives Charitable Fund
• Scripps Howard Foundation
• Western & Southern Financial Fund
• St. Pius X Church in Edgewood
• Friends of Northern Kentucky Harvest
TJ Johnson State Farm Insurance in Wilder, Read Ready Covington, St. Joseph Church in Cold Spring, and St. Timothy Church in Union donated supplies or backpacks.
Many of these generous donors have already stepped up to help fund the 2025 giveaway, and local workers from the IRS in Covington have donated backpacks and supplies.
How to help
Northern Kentucky Harvest also accepts individual donations. If you can help, please send a check to Harvest President Paul Gottbrath, in care of Be Concerned, at 1100 W. Pike St., Covington, KY 41011. Every dollar will be put directly toward school supplies. Donations are tax deductible, and Harvest’s EIN is 31-1682076.
Paul Gottbrath is president of Northern Kentucky Harvest.