WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. — The new school year starts in just under a month and parents are feeling the pinch of higher-priced school supplies due to inflation. A new survey finds parents will spend more than $600 on back-to-school supplies this year. A Winston-Salem mother-daughter duo is doing its part to help ease the burden on Triad families.
16-year-old Kyndall Williams founded The Kyndall Project with help of her mother April Reich when she was just seven years old. Since 2015, her nonprofit has donated more than 6,100 backpacks filled with over 75,000 school supply items for Triad area children.
“It's important for me to keep going because I just like helping people and putting a smile on their face and just overall just helping them in need because they have just like a need for the school supplies and book bags and I just want to help them with that,” Williams said.
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This year The Kyndall Project has a goal of collecting at least a thousand backpacks filled with supplies. Due to inflation and a lack of donations, they've only been able to collect just over 520 bags so far.
“We had to come up with different strategies this year and different ways to raise money this year,” Reich said. “We were like you know what, whatever we give this year, like me and Kyndall said we were used to giving like a thousand book bags, we said you know what if we do 500 this year, we're still blessing 500 kids.”
The Kyndall Project will distribute the backpacks at its 7th Annual Back-to-School Jam on August 13th at Rupert Bell Park in Winston-Salem. The event will run from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.
The nonprofit is still accepting donations.