2020 Community Education Program | White Memorial
Story 155

Blin Richards: White Memorial has been in our community since 1913 and feels that we need to be immersed in our community. We want to partner with other individuals in our community and other organizations in our community so that we can leverage the amount of help that we can provide.

Jennifer Tyner: Today we're out here, partnering with Adventist Health White Memorial and the YMCA and the Boyle Heights Neighborhood Council on a back-to-school celebration. We're here distributing over 5,000 backpacks.

Elizabeth Rodriguez: What I think it means in the community to receive these backpacks donated by ADRA? I think the community is very grateful. I think you can see it by even just being here an hour early before we actually started giving them out. There was a line of people standing, even in their cars, waiting. And I think it lends to the idea that White Memorial is very present in the community.

Alan Sanchez: Having access to the backpacks, it means a lot to them. Sometimes, right now, with the situation that is going on with COVID, we're all caught up with many stressful situations. And this, it alleviates a lot of those concerns. It's something that is going to at least take one of their concerns out of the way and get themselves ready for the kids to go back to school.

Jennifer Tyner: In each backpack there are school supplies, basic school supplies. There is spiral-bound notebooks, glue sticks, erasers, pencil sharpeners, pencils. Some have colored pencils. There are books that the community here have donated, inspirational books. Some have coloring books in them. Adventist Health has donated the masks and hand soaps. At ADRA, we believe every child everywhere should be in school, needs to be in school. That's guaranteed for our future. And this is a campaign that is an Adventist-wide movement to impact children across the globe. One in five children are not in school, and we want to see that change. And now with partners here locally, we're making strides every day.