Sparta-White County Family YMCA will be leading this year’s Backpack Assistance Ministry’s back-to-school backpack giveaway as they begin working with Carleen Benson who has been the program’s coordinator for the past 10 years.
“I don’t know where to start. I am just blown away,” Kyle Goff, CEO of the YMCA, said about the collaboration. “We recruited Carleen as a board member for 2022. I knew about her work with the BAM ministry, but never even considered a collaboration, other than the Y being a partner and helping with the event. It started as a parking lot conversation. Carleen mentioned she had been doing this a long time and was a looking for a trustworthy group of leaders to lead this program in the future. Then the conversations just escalated. It’s funny, it’s similar to how the program was handed to her in 2012.”
In 2012, with grant money having been discontinued for local school districts to provide the annual school supplies for children in the community, the Union Baptist Association started the Backpack Assistance Ministry (B.A.M.) Program. The new mission for B.A.M. was to make Jesus known to the families in the community by distributing nearly 2,000 backpacks stuffed with school supplies, Bibles, the United States Constitution, and more.
Doug Benningfield, pastor of Hickory Valley Baptist Church, contacted Benson to recruit her to become the program’s leader. Benson took the position and grew the program over the past 10 years as the B.A.M coordinator. However, Benson, who is now a director at the YMCA, is looking to serve in other avenues and has facilitated a passing of the torch, handing off the B.A.M program to the YMCA.
“It will take all of us working together to pull this event off,” Goff said. “The support from Carleen and the Union Baptist Association has truly been a blessing. We will work to ensure all area churches continue to work together in unity and purely work together as servants of Christ. The Y will work to glorify God and make Jesus known by serving the youth in our community, just as it was the original mission of the program years ago.”
Goff went on to say the YMCA has established a B.A.M. committee consisting of Benson and himself as well as the YMCA’s Business Administrator, Haley Tollison, Program Director Gin Skinner, Fitness & Wellness Director Nina Weston, Child Care Director Caleb Shuler, Wellness Attendant Josh McCormick, and board members Brian Clark and Paul Grabowski.
For more information, about the B.A.M. program, including this year’s date and location, click here.
Comments
No comments on this item Please log in to comment by clicking here