By Teresa Fang, Stentorian Editor-in-Chief
Service Learning coordinator Sue Anne Lewis and Mailroom staff organize a successful Western NC Supply Drive, thanks to students who have donated and volunteered to pack supplies and teachers including Ms. Gabriela Stefan who took shifts supervising the truck.
The truck, a 40-foot long container on wheels, was driven to Western North Carolina by Director of Residential Education and Housing Michael Newbauer on Friday morning. This supply drive was born out of a way for NCSSM to “support our community and neighbors in need” and “send as many supplies as possible to Western NC,” Lewis wrote in a October 2 email.
From October 2-12, items were donated to the drive via dropping them off directly at the truck in the Bryan parking lot or shipped as packages directly to the Mailroom. More than 120 students signed up to help pack those items in cardboard boxes, labeled, then carried to the truck, contributing more than 400 total hours.
“We repacked them to make sure baby bottles, baby formula, and the like, all went in a box and we labeled it. Batteries, first-aid kids, medicine, feminine products, stuff like that.” said Mailroom Manager Denise Burgette. “We had a lot of those. So we just took them all. The students that came over were just totally amazing.”
During our chat, she gave me a tour of the Mailroom storage, where she showed me a box of white shipping labels ripped off from packages. She says that Lewis plans to have some students write thank you notes to the senders.
“Within two hours, we had 372 Amazon packages.” Burgette said, describing the scene in the Mailroom on October 14. “They couldn’t fit on the shelf so we had them lined up on the dock, and there were extra tables for the students to work, breaking down packages and everything.”
In addition to just holding the supply drive, NCSSM partnered with local Durham business Lee’s 24-Hour Towing to bring a “Stuff the Truck” semitrailer at the parking lot at Club Boulevard and Broad Street. Students were also encouraged to sign a large “NCSSM <3 Western NC” poster in the Bryan lobby and share images on social media promoting the supply drives.