20,000 pounds of FREE school supplies just in time for start of school

July 27, 2012|By DENISE BOHN (dbohn@wsbt.com) | WSBT-TV Reporter

New and slightly used school supplies have been donated by hundreds of students throughout northwest Indiana and southwest Michigan.

A man name Ted Bryant from Granger started a program called "Greenlockers."

The concept is simple. Instead of students cleaning out their lockers and tossing everything at the end of the school year, they put it in donation containers to be recycled and given to kids who need them.

CLICK HERE for information on Greenlockers.

"Instead of throwing everything away, they can donate it," says Bryant.

And donate they have. Thousands of crayons, hundreds of colored pencils, bins full of paper, notebooks, folders, and binders, clothes...piles of them, shoes and much more.

A warehouse in Elkhart on U.S. 6 is full of supplies, 20,000 pounds worth.

"It's a completely free exchange," says Bryant, who is the founder of "Greenlockers," a non-profit organization that takes donated new or used school supplies and passes them on to local charities and teachers...all for free.

"In the economy now, where there are more and more people in need, more students show up at schools with no school supplies, no folders, no pencils, and who's going to buy it for them?" Bryant asks.

70 non-profit agencies in our area, as well as teachers, signed up at Greenlockers.org to receive the free supplies.

"We have families that come through the food pantry, and if they need school supplies on top of their other needs, we're going to try to make sure they get those things," said Penny who works with the Middlebury Food Pantry.

James Cramer, who runs the Boys & Girls Club in Nappanee, says it's amazing the program is all for free.

"This is a blessing every year that we can count on, to be able to come out here and get these resources so that we can give them back to the families that we're serving," said Cramer.

And for Bryant, it's more than just encouraging students to recycle.

"We want to make sure that we are helping out others in need. It's easy, it's straight forward and any school can be a part of it."

When Bryant started this program 7 years ago, he had 2 schools involved. This year, 45 schools joined in.

They started distributing the supplies on Friday and will give out more on Saturday.

Bryant plans on sending some of the items left over to children in India and Columbia, and the rest will be stored and given away next year.

Supplies will only be given to charities or teachers who fill out an online application by going to greenlockers.org

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