World Vision’s school supply donations help teachers and students in low-income schools.

The town of Coalton sits in the beautiful rolling hills of West Virginia. Decades ago, it was a booming coal mining town, until the industry collapsed. Then local timber companies provided good jobs, until the demand from the housing industry collapsed almost two years ago. Now the largest employer, Aegis Communications, has announced it is closing its local offices and laying off more than 200 workers next month at the end of February 2010.

Decades of economic difficulties like these have left more than 70% of the 150 students at Coalton Elementary School eligible for free or reduced school lunches, and placing the school in the Title I program for federal assistance to help students improve their educational performance.

“We have a lot of single families or families where both parents are working, so they don’t get a lot of support at home. We have a number of grandparents raising children. A lot of people out of work, economic issues that they just don’t have the money to buy things,” explains Rose Wolford, 58, who teaches reading at Coalton Elementary for the Title I program.  

You can help children in Appalachia overcome poverty with education.

Providing their children with necessary supplies throughout the school year can be a struggle for many parents. Teachers, themselves on limited budgets, have little choice but to stretch their funds to provide students with classroom tools such as pens, pencils, glue, and notebooks—with little left for anything beyond the essentials.

“You’d either buy it or do without,” says Rose.  

But thanks to World Vision in nearby Philippi, West Virginia, the teachers at Coalton Elementary are able to get the tools their students need—for free.

“A lot of our kids come without basic things, without crayons, without markers, that kind of stuff,” explains Lisa Martin, 48, a second grade teacher at Coalton for more than 20 years. “We ask parents to supply those when they can. And if they can’t, then we’ve got it. We’ve got spiral notebooks to use for journals and that kind of thing because of what we’re able to get [from World Vision’s Teacher Resource Center].”

Teachers come to World Vision’s Resource Center up to four times a year to pick up supplies for their students and classrooms—from standard pens and paper to exciting options like camera and wireless routers that give their students an edge in our technology-driven world. It helps teachers reinforce the essential lesson that kids from lower income communities deserve as many opportunities as those from resource-rich communities. And it helps the students not just learn, but excel.

“I’ve gotten paper, pencils, pens, paper clips, rubber bands,” says Rose. “I’m using one of the wireless routers in my room to connect to the internet. It’s wonderful, just anything we can get, because we have limited budgets. And we get supplies of certain things we normally wouldn’t be able to buy.”

“The wireless router was helpful because I have three laptops in my classroom. One I purchased, two were given to me. I use those three laptops as learning stations in my classroom. I couldn’t do that if I didn’t have the wireless router. And the digital cameras have been beneficial because my kids were taught how to do a PowerPoint.,” says Chris Gear, third grade teacher who believes in providing her students with as many hands-on learning opportunities as possible. “All of that was possible because of what World Vision was able to provide for us.”

Lisa talks about how excited teachers get when they are at World Vision, exclaiming, “Look at this! Look at this!” They find simple items such as paper, pens, tape, and glue; cutting-edge items such as digital cameras for school yearbook pictures; or creative items such as stickers to use in story writing.

“You can look at something and imagine what they can do with it, and they do,” says Mary Tacy, 60, Coalton Elementary School’s principal. “I had this feeling when I first went through [the Teachers Resource Center] with a basket, I’d pick up a tape, and a pencil, and they’d say, ‘Oh, no, you can have more.’ It was just unbelievable that we could actually have this to take back to the school.”

Reg Trefethen, Field Site Director for US Programs in Appalachia, relates a story that he heard at another local school about a teacher who didn’t even have a desk. She found a broken desk in a dumpster and used duct tape to put the leg back on. The teacher broke into tears when she received one of 14 new desks that World Vision was able to supply for the school.

World Vision receives the supplies through the Kids in Need Foundation. The Foundation networks with manufacturers, such as Staples, Office Max, and Target, to procure gifts-in-kind donations. Then the donations go where they are most needed—Title I schools where at least 70% of the students are eligible for reduced or free school lunches.

Classroom supplies from World Vision improve teacher effectiveness, enable the school to stretch limited budgets, and, ultimately, offer students a better opportunity to learn and excel.

You can help children in Appalachia overcome poverty with education.

By Carla Gawthrop
Appalachia
Coalton, West Virginia
January 2010