Ottawa Community Housing (OCH) volunteers are packing more than 2,000 backpacks in a 24-hour pack-a-thon. Around 100 people are assembling thousands of school supplies for children and youth living in OCH communities. The Pack a Sack program helps to relieve low-income families that often make less than $2,000 per month from the financial hardship of buying school supplies, averaging about $100 per child. “Four years ago, we were packing 500 backpacks and that was responding to the need in our community. Now we’re at over 2,000 backpacks. We have the goal of supporting all the children and youth who request a backpack, who live within Ottawa Community Housing, and make sure that they receive a backpack,” said Traci Spour-Lafrance, executive director of the Ottawa Community Housing Foundation. The backpacks are filled with school supplies like lunch bags, water bottles, pencils, markers and geometry sets, providing students from junior kindergarten to Grade 11 with all they need to have a successful school year. Mother and son Trish and Cameron Wright are volunteering with the backpack program for the second year in a row. “It’s such a rewarding opportunity to be able to do this and give back to the community,” said Trish. “Being able to feel like you’re making an impact in people’s lives, and it feels like I’m just doing my part and helping out the community, and that’s a really important thing to me. Just want to help everyone out as much as I can,” said Cameron. The Pack-a-Sack program is 100 per cent funded by donations. More than $60,000 worth of supplies were distributed in 2024, with even more expected to be distributed this year. With inflation and tariff policies, the cost of school supplies continues to increase. “We saw a difference of about a $6,000 more for the exact same amount of supplies in terms of packing 2,000 backpacks,” says Spour-Lafrance, “There are certain items that are affected by the tariffs, whereas others are not. Backpacks, lunch bags, things like that are definitely affected, versus notebooks and pens a little less.” According to a survey by Rakuten, 73 per cent of parents say they go overbudget for back-to-school shopping and 64 per cent of parents with teens say back-to-school shopping has become significantly more expensive compared to previous years. Across the board, 89 per cent of Canadian parents believe that back-to-school shopping costs have risen in recent years. “My heart is so warm. I will see videos that OCH puts up and when you see them giving the bags to the children, the look in their eyes is just impeccable because it’s like, well we have books, we have pencils, we’re able to do our schooling without any roadblocks,” said Trish. Backpacks will be delivered to families on Tuesday.
