Backpacks, Belonging and a Better Start to a New School Year

For many families, the start of a new school year brings excitement. It can also bring a long list of expenses—backpacks, notebooks, pencils, hygiene products, and all the necessities that help a child walk into the classroom feeling prepared.

At Jewish Family Service LA’s annual Tools for School event, around 40 volunteers gathered at the Gunther-Hirsh Family Center on Fairfax to help make that first day a little easier. Together, they packed 500 backpacks for children served through JFS SOVA Community Food & Resource Program and JFS Hope, JFSLA’s domestic violence services program.

Each backpack was filled with school essentials, including binders, notebooks, folders, pencils, crayons, markers, glue sticks, scissors, and rulers, along with toothbrushes and toothpaste. Thanks to the generosity of two dedicated donors, all supplies for the event were fully funded.

For some volunteers, it was their first Tools for School experience. For others, packing backpacks has become an annual tradition—and a meaningful way to help children begin the school year with confidence.

Before the packing began, longtime JFSLA volunteers Michael Ullman and Frankie Gottlieb shared what service has meant to them through their work with SOVA and JFS Hope.

“Today, we’re not just filling backpacks. We’re filling kids with confidence. We’re filling parents with hope for their children. We pack with a purpose and volunteer with our hearts,” Michael Ullman, a JFSLA Volunteer Ambassador told the group.

That sense of purpose also draws new people into JFSLA. Young Leaders Co-Chairs Adam Dehrey and Rochell Rotenberg noted that the event often attracts volunteers who are learning about the organization for the first time.

“The one thing that everybody here has in common is that they love participating in service and giving back to the community,” Dehrey said. “They could have been anywhere in the world on a Sunday morning. They chose to be here, in this building, helping people in need.”

For Zach Gingold, a former Young Leaders chair who has been involved with JFSLA for nearly a decade, Tools for School was where his own connection to the agency began.

“I was taught at a very young age that nothing matters more than showing up,” he said. “There’s nothing better than knowing you’re doing something that’s going to change a child’s life.”

Over the years, showing up has taken many forms for members of JFSLA’s Young Leaders and Community Impact Network. They volunteer at SOVA, connect with older adults and Holocaust survivors, support programs throughout the agency, and travel to Sacramento on behalf of Jewish California (formerly known as JPAC) to advocate for public funding and policies that help sustain critical services for communities across Los Angeles.

Tools for School makes that spirit of service tangible: one room filled with volunteers, hundreds of empty backpacks, and, a few hours later, 500 children better prepared for the year ahead.

As Ullman reminded the group, “A stronger Los Angeles is built when ordinary people decide that someone else’s child deserves the same opportunities as their own.”

One backpack cannot solve every challenge a family may face. But it can help a child walk into school prepared, confident, and ready to learn—and it can remind a child something important as they step into a new school year:

You matter. We believe in you. And your community is showing up for you.