Spotlight With David Daggett: The 2021 Backpack Program

It’s back-to-school time! The start of the school year is very influential for our young people.  Research shows that a positive start can change a life forever. I know we were all hoping for a totally normal start to the school year, but as we all know, we need to make the best of the current circumstances and send our students off to school with a great attitude and help them have a positive start. For many youngsters, simply having the basic supplies is a huge first step.

For the past seven years, our law firm, Daggett Shuler, and the Winston-Salem Police Department have partnered to give underprivileged children the right start to the school year. We pack 250 backpacks with all the items an elementary school-aged child needs and deliver these backpacks to five local elementary schools ahead of the start of school. School administrators will identify the students in the most need. Those students will be provided with a brand-new backpack filled with supplies to start the school year right!

Pencils, crayons, pencil sharpeners, scissors, notebooks, rulers, glue sticks, erasers, two-pocket folders, and – new this year – earbuds will help students who otherwise would not have anything to start the year. In fact, studies show that children who start the school year without the required materials quickly end up lagging behind their peers. Giving children their own backpack and supplies improves their grades and classroom behavior, and they often become more engaged with school and learning.

Back-to-school can be a very expensive time for any family, and after what we have all been through this past year, many more families have fallen on hard times. Our Back-to-School Backpack program helps relieve some of the burden of outfitting a young student for school and will hopefully bring a smile to a child who gets to pick out their brand-new backpack.

Please join us in encouraging and supporting our young people as they head back to school. A great start means a great future, and that is great for all of us and the future of our community!