Ladies of Charity distribute back-to-school backpacks

Intermountain Catholic/Christine Young

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Loretta Horton (left) Saint Olaf Ladies of Charity president, distributes back-to-school backpacks to children at Park View Elementary School.

SALT LAKE CITY — The Ladies of Charity (LOC) will distribute 102 backpacks filled with school supplies to children in need as they return to school. The backpacks were donated to the Ladies of Charity by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Centerville Humanitarian Service Room. Each of the backpacks contained three notebooks, pencils, colored pencils, a pencil sharpener, a ruler and scissors.

The LOC distributed the backpacks to the more than 100 children in the 85 families they serve each month by providing them with a box of supplemental food.

The relationship between the LOC and the Humanitarian Service Room began two years ago when the LDS organization’s supervisors, Bennett and Ailsa Peterson, contacted Daughter of Charity Sister Germaine Sarrazin, LOC moderator, to ask how they could help. The Humanitarian Service Room doesn’t directly serve the poor, but helps those who do.

"I get emotional when I think about how Sr. Germaine has given 52 years of her life to helping the poor," said Bennett Peterson, who first met Sr. Germaine one day in the Bountiful City Post Office. Sr. Germaine wears a Daughter of Charity habit, and he approached her thinking that, as a religious sister, she must serve the poor, he said. "It’s been a spiritual experience just being associated with her."

The Humanitarian Service Room also provides the LOC with gently used books and homemade educational folder games for children. "On Mother’s Day and at Christmas, they also supply us with about 80 large personal care baskets for mothers," said Sr. Germaine. "They have also given us baskets of personal care items for men, and each year at Christmas they give us boxes of hand-made comforters, quilts, baby blankets, stocking caps, scarves and gloves."

The Petersons were asked by the LDS Church to be active in outreach when they were called to supervise the Centerville Humanitarian Service Room. With the help of volunteers, they assist charitable organizations. "Since 2009, we have developed the family personal care baskets and school backpacks," Peterson said. The care baskets are filled with hygiene items and are put together by LDS Relief Society groups and Eagle Scouts, he said.

"The pattern for the school backpack was originally a big purse, but the LDS Relief Society women refined the pattern into a backpack, a more modern way to wear it," Bennett said. "So individuals and groups who want to do something in a humanitarian way get the material, sew them and fill them with the school supplies then bring them to us so we can distribute them."