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ShareFest Backpack Giveaway

Sandy Dickson

Trinity Christian Center on Lewis Avenue was only one of five local churches on August 18 to give away backpacks full of school supplies to area children. With Trinity’s 730 backpacks, a combined total of 3400 backpacks went out to children around Lake County given by the total of 32 Lake County churches involved.  

Depending on the age and grade of the child to receive the backpacks, the packs contained items such as scissors, rulers, notebooks and folders, highlighters, colored pencils, crayons, lead pencils, glue in bottle and/or stick form, pencil boxes and erasers, standard or scientific calculators, protractors, math sets, Kleenex and plastic freezer bags to help kids stay organized. The children went to one of four stations on the premises: Pre-school and Kindergarten, grades 1-3, 4 to 6, or 7 and 8. They even got to choose their backpack color preference among those available.

Free hot dogs, bags of popcorn, soda and Mr. Freezes were also served (and received) with smiles. 

The project is only one of several provided by the Christian organization of ShareFest, which is an organized group of churches working together to serve their community. The group is sponsored by Catalyst, whose common goal is to mobilize Lake County churches for spiritual revolution across Chicagoland.

ShareFest’s districts are divided geographically throughout Lake County with each having its own projects and leaders. The events are carried through by volunteers.

Other ShareFest projects where churches will be working together to serve their communities  include restoring parks, painting schools, fixing leaky roofs for people in the community, and having blood drives. One which is being organized for early October, is a food drive in which the goal is to fill 65,000 bags of food, so as to fill every food pantry countywide, says local organizer Scott Lindemann.

For more information on ShareFest or Catalyst, see Sharefest.net or Catalystweb.org

Copyright © 2007 Sandy Dickson. All rights reserved.