Hannah Maree Ivan – I’ve been here at The Square for 4 1/2 years. The first couple of years I was here, after Christmas we really wanted to focus on back to school so in the past we held competitions where if you spend in the centre you can win something. The problem we were seeing is that only one family could take advantage of that. There was only ever one winner so the competitions didn’t seem like the best incentive for people to come to the Square.
Thinking about kids going back to school and understanding the community that we live in and the area surrounding Lismore, it was like how can we make this benefit the community and make going back to school easier for more than one family? That’s where we came up with the idea of doing some sort of charity initiative. I’d done a lot of research about different initiatives and ‘Operation Backpack’ which originated in America came up. Another girl from our company was interested in doing something as well so we came up with this Operation Backpack concept. We realised we needed to get a partner on board as we couldn’t do it all ourselves and St Vincent’s De Paul came to mind as the perfect partner for us as they can handle all the distribution. We started this last year so 2019 was the first time we did Operation Backpack. We partnered with St Vincents De Paul and I wanted to get the word out there. We got the Mayor involved in our launch and we got as much media involved as we could to help us drive the promotion.
Operation Backpack is …Let’s fill a backpack with every single thing that a child needs to go back to school. We’re talking calculators, rulers, pencils, lunch boxes, etc. Basically what we are trying to tell customers is whatever you can afford. If you’re here at the Square shopping and you’re in Big W you could buy a packet of pencils or a drink bottle and donate them. You could spend $5 and donate some items that can go in that backpack.
The success last year was incredible. We were really taken aback by the involvement of this community. We ended up with about $12,000 worth of product. What we want to do with Operation Backpack is to relieve stress of getting kids back to school for many families. The success of Christmas here is amazing and we see all the families coming in and spending which is great but then how do you get your kids back to school pretty much straight after. It’s such a financial pressure some families put on themselves at Christmas time and we want to try and alleviate that.
We want kids to get back to school with all they need so they can start the year without stress too. Every year we want to do something different and keep it fresh but because of the fires we’ve had, this was a no-brainer. People are going to need help. Everyone is donating to the bushfires but we also know that those families and those kids have to go back to school. This is just a different way we can help. We know how great this community is from how they got behind this initiative last year. Last year we gave away around 500 backpacks. Not only backpacks, they had so much equipment that St Vincents could allocate to local schools around the area who knew families that needed help.
School is hard enough as a child with able means but if you are a child who’s having financial struggle as a family, you go to school and you don’t have the things you need, it’s tough in so many ways. We are now going to turn this into an annual promotion.
We have a giant donation point out the front of Coles. It has a big Operation Backpack sign and a ‘Donate here’ area. There’s a trolley on the other side and at the end of every day we collect it and St Vincent De Paul come every Friday to pick it up and distribute into backpacks. Of course backpacks are one of the main things we need but everything helps. It can be as small as a pencil case. Everyone has their own financial abilities but the smallest thing still makes such a difference.”