Recent Programs - Backpack Donation

Rotary Club Makes Donation to Ingram Sowell Backpack Program

by Bob Augustin Jr.

    The Lawrenceburg Rotary Club held its annual  Community Fundraiser this past April for the benefit of Ingram Sowell School's Backpack Program.  Each Spring the club sponsors fundraising events for the benefit of a local charity or community project.  This year's events, a yard sale at Rotary Park and a Steak Dinner and Auction, were held on Saturday April 26. 

     At the club's  May 23, 2008 meeting, President Bill Phillips presented Ingram Sowell School Principal Gina Haddix with a donation of $3,000.00 to the school's Backpack Program.   Several years ago,  Director of the Family Resource Center Betsy Cheatwood and then Principal of Ingram Sowell Mary Nell Clayton realized that many of the students who attended Ingram Sowell were not receiving sufficient, if any, nourshiment on the weekends.  Their solution was to provide these children, both the students and their pre-school age siblings at home, with non-perishable, easy to fix food items to take home with them when they left school on Friday afternoon, enough to sustain them for the weekend.  Thus the Backpack Program was born.

    In thanking the Rotary Club for its donation,  Principal Haddix informed the club that, due to the generosity of people of Lawrenceburg, the Backpack Program has been an overwhelming success at Ingram Sowell School and has spread to all but three of the other schools in Lawrence County.

Pictured above are Gina Haddix, Principal of Ingram Sowell School and Rotary Club President Bill Phillips.