LIMA, Ohio (WLIO) – Several Lima organizations joined forces to help kids be fully prepared for the upcoming school year.
The Back 2 School Block Party moved to the Pangle Pavilion after Fresh N’ Faded Team Outreach, the South Lima Community Development Corporation, LACNIP, the Martin Luther King Neighborhood Association, and others teamed up to give around 1,000 kids and their families a fun afternoon. The group, now called Fresh N’ Faded Friends and Family, was thrilled about how the combined event turned out.
“For me again, I'm going to use the word great again. I'm just happy that everybody wanted to come, come in and be a part of this event, of what we've been trying to build. It's not my event. It's our event. It's not just me, it's us,” said Leandra Johnson of Fresh N’ Faded Team Outreach.
“It's been something that we've all come in. We were doing our own thing. Now we're coming together, and you can see the result of it. We didn't know what the numbers were gonna look like. Now we're looking like over 1000 people here. So we've got to, you know, serve a lot of kids and help them, you know, give a good start on getting back to school,” said Saul Allen of the South Lima CDC.
Along with free food and school supplies, Lima Senior alumnus Khalil Luster gave away 350 pairs of shoes to make sure kids had a fresh pair to start the year.
“When I was growing up. I know to start school, you want a nice pair of shoes to start off, so you can just focus on school and not worried about what everybody else have on, because you have a nice pair of shoes on too. So just, it just made me feel good, that I can make kids feel good and be able to not like focus on things that they don't have to focus on while they're in school,” said Luster, who hosted his third annual Shoe Giveaway.
Organizers said they plan to meet after the event to discuss what worked and what could be improved to make next year’s Back 2 School Block Party even better.
