Giving Back: Backpacks for Back to School Give David & Margaret Youth Fresh Start

David and Margaret’s Executive Director Charles Rich accepts backpacks from Costco’s Samuel Weimer and Rick Teran.

Samuel Weimer and Rick Teran, part of the San Dimas Costco Marketing Team has made the back to school transition a little easier for the young women residents and foster children at David & Margaret Youth and Family Services (D&M) in La Verne this week.  The program called “Fresh Start Backpack” program is designed to help equip low-income kids with backpacks, paper, scissors and glue. The program has been a community project of Costco since 1993 and has donated nearly 2.9 million backpacks to children in need.

            The recent cuts in State budgets have affected the care for children at the agency and in foster care so much so that there were no monies available to obtain backpacks and supplies for the first day of school this year. D&M Executive Director Charles Rich praised both Weimer and Teran for their assistance in bringing the backpacks and supplies just in time for the beginning of the new school year.  Many residents at the agency attend the on grounds nonpublic Joan Macy School. Rich also mentioned how grateful the agency is as the community continues to support and advocate the work being done at D&M especially as, “we near our 100th anniversary in 2010 celebrating the provision of care and changing people’s lives.”

            David & Margaret Youth & Family Services has been serving Southern California’s children, youth and families in need since 1910.  Current services available include a residential program for adolescent girls, a foster family agency and adoption assistance, educational and mental health services, independent living and transitional housing programs for emancipating foster youth, a self-injury program, family preservation support, school-based counseling, a mentoring program for youth in foster care, treatment for learning disabilities, and other community-based education programs for at-risk youth and families.