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| The Storehouse |
 | | in Washington, D.C.
Students from Mamie D. Lee School give back to The Storehouse by working as stockers to keep shelves filled with school supplies. They also get a chance to sharpen their job skills for the future. |
Every time Jeanette Hill returns from The Storehouse of World Vision, it’s Christmastime in her classroom of kindergartners.
“They were so excited when I put the books on the shelves. They said, ‘Oh boy, new books!’ It’s just like Christmas to them,” says the veteran Washington, D.C. school teacher.
Although she also takes advantage of the other school supplies provided through The Storehouse, it’s books that make the biggest difference in Jeanette’s classroom. As young readers, her students need engaging books that open new worlds to them, literally and figuratively. With shrinking school budgets, she doesn’t have the funding to buy these books, and she’s worn paths between different libraries, trying to find what she needs.
The Storehouse is a facility in the Brentwood area that distributes life-enhancing goods to children and families in need. With monthly visits to The Storehouse, Wynette Jackson can stock her classroom’s shelves with colorful educational tools that help turn her students into young learners. Many of her students come from families that simply don’t have the resources to send them to school with the supplies they need to succeed. And it’s not just pencils and paper, but proper clothing.
For Arsena Strange, another hardworking D.C. teacher, the $250 a year she receives for classroom supplies is gone before the first day of school. The Dunbar High School math teacher is accustomed to having her students come to class without proper supplies. Some are homeless and have no resources of their own. Others come from families that struggle to keep food on the table.
Instead of dipping into her own purse to come up with classroom and school supplies over the course of the year, she makes monthly visits to The Storehouse. On a recent visit she was filling her cart with highlighting pens, teaching games, and other items she can use in the classroom as well as the school nursery, which provides day care for students who have young children.
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