As we all know, Covid-19 has significantly changed the way we do business. As members, we will miss our traditional October OSB shifts at Fred Meyer, helping children choose new clothing that helps them feel confident and warm as they go off to school. Although school has started virtually at home, the need to replace outgrown clothing is as urgent as ever. Family budgets are tight with many parents laid-off, and struggling to adapt to the “new normal”.

For the first time, we have elected to provide $100 Fred Meyer gift cards to children who would normally be lined-up in close quarters among their peers for an in-store shopping night. By providing cash directly to children’s families, we are being Covid-safe, and are getting financial assistance to people in a timely manner. Families will be able to choose the best way to spend the funds to address their children’s most urgent needs, whether it be clothing, school supplies, food or medicine.

As always, the ability of our members to be flexible and creative helps us with our valuable work. Good job ladies!

Paper paper everywhere.

Rosella, Julie and Ginger kept everyone organized during our first OSB work party putting packets together. 450 down, only a couple thousand to go!

Packets will be distributed by ALE/OSB volunteers at Northshore Middle Schools during the pilot of our distribution program. We are starting with Northshore first, as they have the least amount of students served by the OSB program. This will help us troubleshoot any issues before rolling out the program to the larger numbers of students that we serve in the Lake Washington and Bellevue School Districts.

Keep those labels straight!

After a few mishaps with stamp placement, we managed to figure out how to talk and label at the same time. Skills!

We can always count on Marlene to make things fun, and she needed little encouragement to cheer us on and get us laughing over our apparent lack of multi-tasking skills.

–submitted by Kendra Valentine, OSB committee member 9/27/20