Joe Blundo: So to Speak

Kids who have suffered what no kid should — abuse, neglect, other kinds of trauma — need counseling.

And sometimes, they find it easier to draw their feelings than talk about them. So paper, pencils and crayons can be powerful tools.

My favorite supplier of those tools is the Tom Fennessy/Mike Harden Back-to-School Project. For more than two decades, this all-volunteer charitable organization has been providing school supplies to kids whose families would struggle to afford them otherwise.

In this most-unusual year, its work might be needed more than ever. And so I make my annual plea for donations and volunteers to help get it done once again.

The project's main focus is providing backpacks filled with school supplies to thousands of kids so they can start a new school year with the essentials, just as their more fortunate peers do. This year the project has found an additional way to help.

It is providing school supplies to Directions for Youth and Families (dfyf.org), which provides mental, emotional and behavioral health services to more than 6,000 clients in central Ohio. It also offers educational and recreational programs.

John Cervi, director of programs at Directions, said the school supplies are helping in two ways:

• Families with limited computer access are using them to help kids keep up with remote classes. One child can be on the computer while another works the old-fashioned way.

"They still need these tactile types of things," he said.

• Counselors — now limited to treating kids through tele-health visits because of the pandemic — incorporate the materials into their sessions, encouraging young clients to express themselves visually.

"When you're a kid, talking can only go so far," Cervi said.

Directions will be one of many central Ohio organizations to receive backpacks this August. Last year, the project distributed 10,800 backpacks; the goal this year is 11,000. That will cost about $86,000, said Terri Leist, who leads the organization.

"I have no way of knowing if the pandemic will impact our donations, so I really will have to put my faith in the people of central Ohio to come through as they have always in the past," she said.

I love this organization for its mission, its resourcefulness and, of course, its name. Tom Fennessy and Mike Harden, both deceased colleagues of mine, were Dispatch columnists with big hearts for people in need.

You can donate to the project that bears their names at tomfennessy.org. Or you can mail a check made payable to the Tom Fennessy/Mike Harden Back-to-School Project to P. O. Box 12234, Columbus, Ohio, 43212. The website also has information on volunteering to stuff backpacks, another critical need.

Let's do it for the kids.

Joe Blundo is a columnist for The Dispatch.

joe.blundo@gmail.com

@joeblundo