Children from the Boys and Girls Club of Greater Lee County are more than prepared for the new school year thanks to Academy Sports and Outdoors.
The Auburn location of the sporting goods store donated $100 gift cards to 30 children from the Boys and Girls club.
“They go throughout the store and try to pick up some back-to-school items, backpacks, socks, shoes maybe some t-shirts and clothes and things like that,” said Tommy Riley, store director of the Auburn's Academy.
Wednesday morning 30 children ages 6-12 arrived at the store eager to purchase school supplies.
“[My favorite part] is interacting with the kids,” Riley said. “Seeing their faces, seeing them smile, seeing them have a good time.”
The Boys and Girls club of Greater Lee County decided to bring 15 children from their Auburn location and 15 children from their Opelika location, said Betty Burns, the development director for the Boys and Girls Club of Greater Lee County.
Academy locations throughout the United States have been putting on events like this for 9 years. The Auburn location has donated back-to-school shopping trips to the Boys and Girls Club of Greater Lee County for the last three years, according to a press release from Academy.
“It’s just a really good thing for our kids,” Burns said. “A lot of them don’t get the opportunity to come to the store and do shopping. It’s a great opportunity and really good learning experience for them.”
Which items the children purchase is left up to them. They choose what they liked while the Academy employees and Boys and Girls Club staff helped the children find the correct size.
In anticipation of this year’s back-to-school shopping event, Burns had the children’s parents fill out an information sheet about their child with their sizes to help the employees and staff get the correct sizes for their child.
“The fun part of it is when you’re shopping with them, their parents aren’t here,” Burns said. “So it’s not necessarily what the parents think they need. I think last year there was an enormous number of fidget spinners that were purchased. But we do try to encourage them to get that stuff to give them a good start to the school year.”
Wanda Lewis, CEO of the Boys and Girls Club of Greater Lee County, thinks allowing the children to make their own purchase decisions is a great lesson for the children to learn at such a young age.
“They’re told ‘you can choose what you want,’” Lewis said. “The other side of it is they have to do some budgeting. They only have $100 to spend so they have to figure out ‘if I choose this shoe at this price, then I have to think about what else do I want and will I be able to afford it.’”
The children were excited before they even got to the store, Lewis said. It is something they have been looking forward to for a while. They enjoy shopping on their own.
While Academy’s goal was to get the 30 children some back-to-school items, Lewis and her team at the Boys and Girls Club had some different goals.
They wanted to bring children they thought would benefit most from the shopping spree.
“It’s really special,” Lewis said. “For this event we try to look at families that we know could really benefit from this kind of opportunity. For us it means that we know those children and families are being helped at a good time of the year.”
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