7th Annual Western Addition Backpack Giveaway & Health Fair

Devi Zinzuvadia
Director of Engagement | Collective Impact

Engage San Francisco and USF School of Nursing and Health Professions has partnered with Collective Impact to support this event. USF faculty and administrators collaborated with other healthcare providers to provide healthcare education and screenings at this free event.

Mo’MAGIC’s back-to-school celebration is held the first Saturday of every August, and features free backpacks, school supply kits, and books for students ranging from Pre-K to college age. There is also a health and wellness fair; families can count on vision, hearing, dental, and stress tests, and additional check-ups from medical professionals, and gather resources from other community organizations and city agencies. Healthy meals and snacks, games, a bouncy house, a reading corner, and other activities rounded out the day.

More than 1,200 backpacks and kits were distributed on August 6. As is the case every year, families started lining up outside the doors by 7am in order to secure items to get the school year off to a strong start for their children, no doubt due in part to the work of local news outlets sharing information about the day.

It takes many hands to mount a community event of this size, and Mo’MAGIC (a program of Collective Impact) is grateful to have had the chance to collaborate with our long-standing partners at the University of San Francisco. Dr. Wanda Borges again coordinated the presence of two dozen students and supervising faculty from the USF School of Nursing & Health Professions; these volunteers met our families with energy, expertise, and enthusiasm, and were a huge part of the success of the day. The K-2 classroom annex at Ella Hill Hutch was transformed into a multi-specialty clinic space, complete with vision, hearing, and general wellness checks.

All of us at Collective Impact | Mo’MAGIC are grateful for the continued partnership of our colleagues at the Engage SF initiative at University of San Francisco, in service of the children and families of the Western Addition.