The First Backpack project, in response to the current situation, will collect support and gifts in 2022 for schoolchildren in Ukraine who are most in need at the moment.
The organization aims to provide children from families at social risk with backpacks and other necessary school supplies. The goal of the project is to give prospective freshmen an equal start in school so that children start their first grade with dignity and confidence.
The goal of the project in 2022 - extremely ambitious, to provide as many as 500 children (almost 4 times more than in 2021) in Lithuania with the necessary school inventory from social risk families and Ukrainian children arriving in Lithuania.
Project progress - the project team collects funds for the ordering and completion of stationery required for first-timers in Lithuania from families at social risk and students of different ages at school.
Vilnius International Rotaract Club from 2016 initiates the First Backpack project because it believes that every child has the right to the best start in school. The aim of the project is to provide all the necessary school inventory to future first-graders who grow up in low-income and socially at-risk families.
Prospective first-graders are selected in cooperation with municipal social workers in the regions of Lithuania where poverty, unemployment and social problems are highest in families. On September 1, 2021, 133 first-graders from Jonava, Kėdainiai, Prienai, Elektrėnai, Kaišiadorys and Raseiniai municipalities met with the First Backpacks. In the last 5 years, we've donated our first backpacks to more than 400 children.
This year, Vilnius St. Christopher Rotary Club, so this year we are setting bigger goals and challenges for ourselves!