Classroom Central

Classroom Central is an awesome organization helping students in underprivileged schools get school supplies they desperately need. Every employee and volunteer at Classroom Central is really passionate about what they do. Risa G., the volunteer coordinator, is great to work with. I highly recommend donating school supplies or volunteering time at Classroom Central. You can trade six hours of volunteer time (3 hours for current teachers) for one teacher shopping day!

I had the pleasure of volunteering here earlier this week and had a great time. I went with about 10 of my coworkers, and we all had different «jobs» to do from helping with check out to running the stamps to cut out shapes for bulletin boards.
What Classroom Central does, is provide free school supplies for teachers in underprivileged school districts. They cover about 7 districts from Union to Mecklenburg to even one in SC.
They have everything set up for teachers to «shop» the store. They get a certain quantity of each item and can pick up to 25 different items. These items range from book bags, to one subject notebooks, to markers, pens, pencils, and crayons. All the items are donated and Classroom Central doesn’t receive money from the state.
Risa is in charge of the volunteers who work there, and she is a gem. She’s very patient with people like me who ask a lot of obvious questions, and I can tell she appreciates everyone who comes in.
If you ever have the chance to volunteer, please do so. They have a sign up online, and normally go in 4 hour shifts. Mine was 1:30−5.

Well, this isn’t a normal store anyone can just walk into and buy from, but I guess if it’s on Unilocal it deserves a review.
There are two ways to access Classroom Central, one as a teacher (or principal, etc) working at a school with a certain percentage of students on the free lunch program, another is as a volunteer (and the point of view from which I’m writing this).
The set up is fairly simple, a store (with shopping carts) shaped in an L lined with notebooks, binders, die cuts, pencils, pens, lined paper, calculators, glue — a lot of basics teachers needs to successfully teach in their classroom, and often have to spend money out of their own pockets to provide for their students. Here, though, through loads of donations, supply drives, and volunteers, the teachers can «shop» for free. There are even backpacks, lunch boxes, and assorted prizes that can be purchased for the students. There is a whole system set up of max amounts per item and max items total so every teacher isn’t supermarket sweeping it each month, but with some «buying» around $ 400 worth of supplies each trip, this place is really assisting educators.
Just a great group trying to help out teachers and programs that already face enough problems and budget cuts as it is — can you really say anything bad about it?