The first day of school can be stressful for children who show up without the necessary tools they need to learn. School districts have less money to allocate for supplies, leaving parents and teachers to cover the gap. Meanwhile, teachers, on average, spend $500 of their own money each year buying supplies for their classrooms. That’s why the Gene B. Glick Company mobilizes each year to help lessen the back-to-school burden.

Glick’s apartment properties and the corporate office compete in an annual school supply drive called Project Fresh Start. The collected supplies are then donated to various nonprofit organizations, schools and residents in communities where Glick properties are located.

Residents and Glick team members at Wesley Park Apartments in Auburn, Indiana, collected nearly 8,000 school supplies this year, the most of any Glick property through Project Fresh Start. The supplies were donated to the local Catholic Charities and placed in backpacks for kids in grades K-12. Residents also packed supplies for local preschoolers attending DeKalb County’s Head Start Program.

Glick properties weren’t the only ones taking part in the friendly competition. Project Fresh Start Teams also formed at the Glick corporate office to collect school supplies. And this year, Glick Cares, our employee volunteer program, introduced a new Backpack Build event. On July 25, Glick team members at the corporate office packed 225 backpacks full of school supplies to donate to children at various Glick properties across Indiana. The backpacks included pencils, erasers, folders, glue sticks, scissors, notebooks, markers, crayons, colored pencils and even a personal note of encouragement from a Glick team member.

The following Glick properties received the backpacks from the corporate office’s Backpack Build:

• Cambridge Square North – Indianapolis
• Carriage House East – Indianapolis
• Colonial Square – Indianapolis
• Colonial Village – Clarksville
• Jamestown Seymour – Seymour
• Loper Commons – Shelbyville
• Mann Village – Indianapolis
• The Reserve at Chandler’s Glen – Bloomington
• Thompson Village – Indianapolis
• Windsor Park – Indianapolis

Since Project Fresh Start launched in 2015, Glick has collected over 118,000 school supplies! This year alone, Glick collected nearly 22,000 school supplies.

Project Fresh Start is just one way that Glick gives back to residents and the broader community. To learn more about Glick’s other corporate social responsibility initiatives, click here.