Update from Pointe Aux Chenes Elementary School

We just received this note from the principal of Pointes aux Chenes Elementary school in Montegut, LA.  Fate, and a few calls to customers in this area, brought us to this school and community who we could help directly in their rebuilding efforts. 

I have 150 desks that need to be replaced.  We are looking at flat topped desk with an open drawer to hold the students books.  School specialty has one with a plastic desk top that looks interesting at 129.00.  However if this is too expensive an endeavor we could also use computer desk. We only need 50 of those. I have located two again in School Specialty that is a tower type LE58 and a plastic student's desk LEM32DUO.  Or we also need 14 teacher desk. IF you find anything along these lines we are most grateful for the donation.  Please don't think that you have to do it all- or exactly as requested.  You have made a substantial contribution to us and we are eternally grateful.  U Conference's gracious donations have already been the subject of great appreciation and admiration.

I have the book list and have our librarian working on a price and source list.  Occasionally schools get discounts, so she is putting that together. 

We hope to get back to normal after the Christmas holidays.  It just seems to be taking so long.  However, your generosity has certainly lightened my load.  Thank you so much, dawn   

My thoughts: Imagine trying to teach students when neither the students nor the teachers have desks. And this is 3 months AFTER the hurricanes came through LA. 3 months.

Yeah; Neither can we. That's why we're helping them.

We're meeting next week to see how we can redirect some of our marketing budget instead to this greater need. Normally we'd send either flowers or gift certificates to our customers as a thanks for sending us referrals. And we usually send gifts each holiday season to our customers and partners. We'll instead use those same funds to buy desks for the teachers and students. And we'll send a note to our customers and vendors showing how we've donated instead to this worthy community.