Helping Others

School supplies drive raises hope

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For many children across Long Island, school supplies are a luxury they do not take for granted. And for John Theissen, supplying these children with the right necessities to start school comfortably is a priority for his organization, the Wantagh-based John Theissen Children’s Foundation.

For the past 14 years, this charity has been holding its annual school supplies drive in which social workers from school districts across the island work with the federation to provide underprivileged and sick children with backpacks, supplies, and new clothes to start the year off. “Some kids refuse to go to school because they are too embarrassed they won’t fit in without having what the others kids do,” said Theissen. “The best part of the school supplies drive is giving the kids the self esteem to go to school each day.”

Theissen works with social workers from different schools who recommend approximately 30 kids each. The foundation then provides each kid with a backpack filled with school supplies and gives them a $150 gift card to Old Navy to buy back-to-school clothes.

The drive begins each year in the third week of July and runs through the middle of September. Each year, roughly $80,000 is raised for the program. About 70 percent of this is acquired through a variety of different fundraisers the foundation holds throughout the year, the most prominent being the Freaky 5K run around Halloween time each year in Wantagh. The rest is raised from donations and grants to the federation.

Since he started the foundation, his main goal was to help children who aren’t given the help they deserve. Theissen got the idea for his organization after he was hospitalized for a brain tumor when he was 17. There, he met a 7-year old girl named Tasha who rarely got visitors and didn’t have many people who cared or looked out for her. One December, she was supposed to go to a hospital Christmas party and when her parents did not show up to take her, Theissen’s parents took her instead. When she visited Santa at the party and he asked what she wanted, she said a teddy bear that she gave to Theissen.

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