NHA Headquarters Hosts Supply Drive to Support Students Learning at Home

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, families across the nation and even within National Heritage Academies (NHA) schools may be experiencing joblessness, homelessness, or illness. The Service Center, NHA’s headquarters, responded to this adversity by hosting a supply drive in hopes of easing the stress of families by providing supplies to use at home.

The Service Center (SC) organized the drive to provide extra support for families. While NHA continues to supply required instructional materials necessary for learning, these donations were collected for students at the selected schools to use at home while participating in any form of remote or virtual learning. Items were collected and sent as additional take-home supplies for students at four NHA schools that were deemed most in need. ​​​​​​​
 
Schools were selected based on high free and reduced lunch percentages as well as dispersing them across schools that fall under a handful of director of school quality’s (DSQ) portfolios. Because the goal at NHA is to provide the best education to students, SC employees wanted to provide some relief for families who are struggling to afford additional school supplies for use at home. ​​​​​​​
 
“We wanted the supplies to get to schools as quickly as possible, so they could be distributed to families during food distribution, Chromebook pick-up, drive-thru paperwork parties, etc.,” shared Dan Holder, intervention services manager at NHA. “As an office supporting schools, we believe it is critical to display the Moral Focus virtues and Core Values that our schools teach. It is important to support our students in order to ensure they achieve their academic goals.”
 
NHA believes that kindness and strong hearts and minds can impact the world in significant ways. This extends beyond NHA schools, but into the SC as well. Virtues like respect, compassion, and perseverance are essential for kids and adults to succeed.

All donations were dropped off by employees and placed in collection bins located in various places throughout the building. In order to decrease the amount of contact, the supplies were divided up into individual bags so school staff could easily grab and hand out accordingly.  ​​​​​​​
 
For Holder, it was amazing to see the support and quick response from Service Center teammates. While they didn’t get to witness the student distribution, they were happy to know that school staff was able to provide these items to families in need. “The collection of take-home supplies for students is a small example of compassion and encouragement while families continue to experience shifts in their child’s learning environment,” he explained. “At NHA, we strongly believe that our Core Values should be displayed in our work and support for schools. It was amazing to see the support and quick response from our Service Center teammates."

Items collected included notebooks, folders, highlighters, rulers, colored pencils, crayons, glue sticks, glue, and scissors. Holder hopes to host more drives such as this in the future, and find additional ways to support students and their families. 

Thanks to the generous contributions, over 500 students received a bag of school supplies to use at home! In total, more than 4,500 supplies were donated. School administrators were overwhelmed by the kindness and support when the items were delivered.