Backpack project had a humble beginning
Teresa Devitt and Louisa Mampieri Ticconi were just looking to do a little good for the community.
So they started something that — 104,000 school backpacks later — is still making a difference.
“It’s really exciting to know that this idea to try to do something in a small way has really grown,” said Devitt, co-founder of the organization that has since become the Tom Fennessy/ Mike Harden Back-to-School Project.
In 1998, she and Ticconi launched an effort to provide school supplies to kids in Columbus homeless shelters. Now in its 20th year, the project has evolved into a multicounty endeavor that this summer hopes to outfit 9,500 kids whose families — homeless or not — struggle to afford school supplies.
Once again, I make a plea for one of my favorite charities. A donation helps provide the $65,000 needed to make sure that every one of those 9,500 students starts school on an equal footing with his or her peers.
Volunteers to help fill the backpacks are also needed.
Devitt, 54, of Columbus and Ticconi, 69, now living near Cleveland, launched the organization based on Devitt’s experience with a similar initiative in Chicago.
That first year, they and friends raised more than $8,000 in four weeks, enough to provide backpacks for 365 kids in shelters, Devitt said.
She and Ticconi sought
Columnist Mike Harden, who agreed to write about the effort if they would name it for the late Tom Fennessy, a Dispatch columnist who championed the poor.
Harden’s name was added to the organization after he died in 2010.
The same kitchentable kind of organizing that started the effort has prevailed throughout its 20-year history. It’s still an all-volunteer, low-budget operation that depends on the generosity of central Ohioans.
In 2002, Devitt and Ticconi turned over the operation to Betty Kletrovets of Grove City, who expanded it beyond Franklin County, with the backpack numbers climbing by hundreds or thousands every year.
Kletrovets was succeeded in 2016 by Terri Leist of Columbus.
In my years of covering the project, I’ve
spoken to mothers in homeless shelters, kids at youth clubs, a grandmother struggling to hold things together. Their stories all bore one similarity: In their worlds, money for school supplies doesn’t come easily, if it comes at all. A full backpack is a big deal, as anyone can see from the faces of the kids who receive them.
Ticconi said the idea that something she helped start is still having an impact raises her spirits every time she thinks about it.
“I just am honored that it’s still doing good.”