Food, hair cuts, backpacks, books and most importantly a good time were the hallmarks of The Storehouse’s Ninth Annual Back to School barbecue Aug. 28 at Covington Christian Fellowship.
“We just wanted the whole day to be filled with just a lot of fun,” said Storehouse Executive Director Meg Holland. “We broke all records (for attendance). There was probably close to 800 people.”
The barbecue is part of The Storehouse’s mission to provide for families in the area who have a little less, Holland explained.
“We like to target at risk kids in the community,” she said. “It wasn’t just the families that we serve, we opened it up to Covington schools.”
Since February 1999, The Storehouse in Covington has been helping local families in need by taking boxes of food to their homes on Saturday mornings and if it was OK, praying with those they helped.
Nine years ago, Holland said, they realized as school approached there was a need to help families get ready by providing supplies.
“And we wanted to be one more opportunity to bless them and be that resource of help to them,” she said. “We realized it was much bigger than the families we were serving so we slowly began to open it up more to the community. So, it has really grown.”
At the first barbecue, there were about 200 people, this year it was nearly 800.
They handed out 320 backpacks filled with school supplies thanks to financial donations.
“We used to get so many donations for erasers, pencils, notebooks, backpacks and that was OK when were just doing 150,” Holland said. “But as the numbers went up, we found it was easier to just take financial donations. We get a much better price. And the money goes much further. And organizationally it was a lot easier because we knew exactly what we had and we weren’t waiting for things to come in.”
Hair stylists volunteered their time and provided 57 hair cuts. There were 150 volunteers from the 11 churches that support The Storehouse. They also provided 34 oil changes for single moms. And nine bikes were raffled off.
Holland added that the partnership among the churches as well as with individuals and businesses in the community make the event possible each year.
“Even though it’s on our property, I want people to realize it’s not just our church doing this,” she said. “We’re all working together. We can’t do it by ourselves, that’s for sure.”
A retired teacher had coordinated a book drive at Sawyer Woods Elementary, Holland said, and so there were some 2,000 books for the youngsters to pick from and take home — each child who attended got to pick five books.
There were also informational booths including MultiCare, which had volunteers doing glucose checks on kids and adults as well as University of Washington Dental Health whose volunteers checked over teeth and gave kids tooth brushes in addition to lessons on how to brush properly.
There were also hundreds and hundreds of pounds of donated clothes, much of it new, for kids to pick out some new items and accessories for the start of the school year.
But, it wasn’t all business and learning, there was food, games, a water melon eating contest, a slip and slide, just to name a few of the fun activities at the barbecue.
Holland said she is quite proud of how smoothly the event went this year because “it can be quite overwhelming when you open the gates and people flood in and you wonder if you have everything covered.”
“We have a great team that feels very passionate about this,” she said. “There were just so many people this year that gave of their time and their products that just really made it successful.”
