What We Do
At Kids Backing Kids, we strive to educate communities about social issues occurring all around us. We do this through our annual drives and our speaker events.
Annual Drives
We have three drives that we host annually: a Back-to-School drive, a Holiday Gift drive, and a Diaper/Food drive. Each drive includes many ways for our volunteers to get involved! Read more about our drives below.
Community Speakers
We give informative and engaging presentations to schools, community agencies, faith-based organizations, town departments, first responders, businesses, and other nonprofit organizations. Topics include childhood poverty, homelessness, and food insecurity.
OUR ANNUAL DRIVES
Back-To-School Drive
For many families, the cost of new school supplies is a financial challenge. Wouldn't it feel great to help a family take away this one stress of buying new school supplies?
We partner with schools, housing programs, and community-based programs in Wellesley, Needham, Newton, and Dorchester to provide backpacks with school supplies for families.
VOLUNTEER FOR THE DRIVE
Sponsor a student & stuff a backpack: Shop for school supplies on our list and fill the backpack(s) yourself. Someone will pick up the backpack(s) when ready or you can deliver the backpack(s) to KBK. The cost for each assembled backpack will be around $75-$100.
Holiday Gift Drive
For some families, buying holiday gifts competes with other financial demands, like putting food on the table and paying bills. Help us take some of the financial stress off these families!
With help from the community, we get the gift lists of children and put together bags full of gifts which we then get ready to be delivered for the holidays.
VOLUNTEER FOR THE DRIVE
Sponsor a child: We’ll give you a personalized gift wish-list from the child. You buy gifts from the list and we'll pick them up at your home or you can deliver them to us.
Wrap gifts: Join us in wrapping all the gifts! With holiday music and treats, this is a great volunteer opportunity for families to participate in a festive, feel-good activity. Each wrapping session takes about an hour.
Diaper Drive
Of course, we all wish that babies were born completely potty-trained. Well, that's a dream that will never come true, so we have the next best thing - diapers! But it turns out that diapers are really expensive, costing $80 to $100 per month for one baby or toddler. In fact, 1 in 3 families experiences diaper need. That's a lot of kids in need of diapers.
We work with community partners and diaper-based nonprofits to collect as many diapers, wipes, pull-ups, and swimmers as we can. We then distribute these items to several organizations that help families in need.
VOLUNTEER FOR THE DRIVE
Drop off diapers: We have a diaper-drop off day where we set up shop and collect donations. Stop by and drop off any donations!
Collection day: Volunteer to work at the collection site with us! We will be collecting donations and sorting them by size and type.
COMMUNITY SPEAKERS
We give informative and engaging presentations to schools, community agencies, faith-based organizations, town departments, first responders, businesses, and other nonprofit organizations. Our Directors and trained volunteers speak on topics ranging from childhood poverty and homelessness to food insecurity and the social and psychological impact of traumatic life events in childhood. These range from brief (~10 minutes) and informal discussions to more extended (30 or 60 minutes) and formal presentations – whatever works best for your group.
KBK youth volunteers are trained by our leadership team to give talks on these topics. This helps them to really learn and understand the impact of poverty, homelessness, food insecurity, and trauma on children. It also helps them develop public speaking skills, and it teaches them how to engage with other leaders in the community. This is an important component of our KBK volunteer program.