It was a perfect storm – 7 weeks into the new school year, Julian’s 6th grade science teacher sent a notification requesting more pencils after handing out her entire supply to her students, Wesley’s Kindergarten teacher requested more construction paper and Quincy came home needing a new pack of composition notebooks for 4th grade english. I swiftly Amazon Primed the supplies and breathed a sigh of relief, getting one more thing off my to do list as expeditiously as possible.

Less than a week later, on a hunt for a certain camera charger, I located a stash of unpacked boxes from our recent house move and opened them to find loads of pencils, construction paper and composition notebooks, in addition to every office supply one could need with enough quantities to open a shop of one’s own. The boys circled around the newly uncovered cache, and weighed in – “Mom! We need to give all of this to our teachers!”

And from that very day, we’ve made it our mission to collect the school supplies that come home unused every year (we’ll even take the pack of crayons with the missing red crayon!) and give them back to teachers and students who need them.

uSupplies is a 501(c)3 located in Austin, Texas with a mission to collect and distribute unused school supplies to teachers and students in need.