Name: These SF teens built a school supplies pipeline for low-income families
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These SF teens built a school supplies pipeline for low-income families

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This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigateLana Nguyen sits in a closet in her parents’ studio apartment in the Tenderloin.She has a Zoom background of the Bay Bridge, but every time she adjusts her body, the background flickers to reveal the tight confines of the surrounding clothes on hangers.“It sounds sad, but I had to take my AP exams in my bathroom,” she says. “It was the only place with a large flat surface.”Nguyen, 17, is a low-income student at George Washington High School in San Francisco, and part of one of the groups hardest hit by Bay Area schools’ shift to "distance learning."“Especially for me, with my living situation, it’s hard to find a quiet space, to just have a room to do my work in. I live in a studio (with my parents), there’s no privacy room, so usually I do all of my work during school where I have the library, the classroom, or even just a cafe to focus and do work. At home, I don’t have the same area.”Nor has she always had the same materials.Nguyen says it was a constant struggle growing up debating whether to prioritize buying school supplies or food. A struggle she didn’t want to fall on other low-income families (especially during a pandemic), which is why she decided to do something about it.Nguyen, along with her friend Susanna Lau (also 17, and an incoming senior at GWHS), launched on May 19. Using a free website builder and a lot of grassroots efforts, the pair has spearheaded a fundraising effort that has brought in $4,000 and provided school supplies to more than 100 low-income families.Working with organizations like the APA Family Support Services (which helps at-risk families cope with the challenges of raising young children) and outreaching to ZIP codes in underserved areas, Nguyen and Lau amassed a list of more than 1,000 families in need in just two months.“There’s a lot of demand,” Nguyen says. “A lot of kids don’t have basic supplies.”Which is why the pair – along with a handful of other teens who’ve since joined the SupplyHopeInfo team – did more than just raise money.“In the long term, we won’t always have funds,” Nguyen says. “So we also focus on advocacy.”They’ve put together a list of more than 60 resources that include where to get financial support, where to find food pantries nearby, and even made a list of COVID-19 testing sites. There’s also a newsfeed with posts about preparing for college as a low-income student, personal essays from low-income, first-generation students, and donation updates.It’s a lot to take on, especially in the midst of entering their final year of high school. But both said they’ve felt support at every turn.“Because we’re low income, we understand the struggle; my mom was pretty supportive,” Lau says.It’s hard not to be. As the Bay Area already faces the problems like (a situation that most adversely affects low-income families) and , Nguyen and Lau are providing an actual solution to a problem.All of the supplies they’ve sent to date are tailored to grade levels.“In every package, we provide pencils, erasers, sharpeners. Then in ones for preschool kids, they have crayons, markers, things like that. Then high school and college it’s no crayons, but instead college-ruled notebooks, highlighters and pens,” Lau says. “Families sign up based on how many students they have, what grade level they’re in, and then give us a way of contacting them, then we choose the families by lottery. We keep in close contact with families, which is why we ask for a way of contacting them, and keep them updated on their shipment.”And the supplies are shipped directly from retailers to homes to keep them pandemic-safe.“There’s already a lack of resources for low-income families; we most heavily rely on school resources,” Nguyen says. “And because no one else was doing this, it felt like it was something we have to do and step up and give back to our community.”Grant Marek is the Editorial Director of SFGATE. Email: grant.marek@sfgate.com | Twitter: @grant_marek

This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigateLana Nguyen sits in a closet in her parents’ studio apartment in the Tenderloin.She has a Zoom background of the Bay Bridge, but every time she adjusts her body, the background flickers to reveal the tight confines of the surrounding clothes on hangers.“It sounds sad, but I had to take my AP exams in my bathroom,” she says. “It was the only place with a large flat surface.”Nguyen, 17, is a low-income student at George Washington High School in San Francisco, and part of one of the groups hardest hit by Bay Area schools’ shift to...

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Grant Marek

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These SF teens built a school supplies pipeline for low-income families

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