Kids Baseball Club helps Kaiser Permanente score on backpack campaign

You could call it a home run, and that’s how it seemed when the enthusiastic members of a San Carlos kids baseball club pitched in with a recent Kaiser Permanente Redwood City drive to collect back-to-school supplies and backpacks for underserved kids.
Four teams of 8-to-12 year olds from the Lumberjacks Ball Club raised cash and bought extra school supplies for a campaign sponsored by KP Redwood City nurses.
Twice a year, a group of nurses and staff at the hospital who are dedicated to high quality patient care sets up a project to help the community around the KP Redwood City hospital. This year, the committee decided seek donations of school supplies for the San Mateo County Children’s Fund, which provides assistance to low-income, homeless, and foster children in the county so they get a good start on the school year.
The campaign started well enough.
“We put out nine donation barrels in the employee break rooms,” said Amrit Mann, a chairperson of the nurse group and a pre-op/recovery room nurse in the KP Redwood City Ambulatory Surgery unit, “and we were doing pretty well with the collections. “
Mann says doctors, nurses and staff donated backpacks, pens, pencils, notebooks, crayons, and other school supplies. But then, something magical happened.
“One of my nurse colleagues Nikki Huth showed a list of what we were trying to collect to her grandchildren,” says Mann. “She suggested the boys use their allowances to buy some school supplies and donate them to Kaiser Permanente Redwood City.”
One of the grandchildren, 9- year-old Jake Busser, had a better idea. He asked his baseball team to help find some school supply donations. In all, all 4 baseball teams with the San Carlos Lumberjacks gathered donated school supplies.
It’s all part of the Lumberjacks tradition, wrote Jake’s mother Mykenzie Busser in an email to Amrit: “We focus not only on learning the game of baseball but teaching respect, values, sportsmanship, leadership, team work and community outreach.”
As the Kaiser Permanente Redwood City caregivers filled nine barrels with school supplies and backpacks, the San Carlos Lumberjacks started their own collection to make the start of school and the donation even better.
“This is amazing,” exclaimed Amrit, “the team members and their 11 families collected more than a dozen new backpacks and 4 large boxes of school supplies to boost Kaiser Permanente’s donations to the San Mateo County Children’s’ Fund.”
The San Mateo County Children’s’ Fund is dedicated to helping low-income and foster children maintain and improve their quality of life. In San Mateo County, it serves more than 4,500 kids, ages newborn to 18.
Amrit Mann estimates the campaign received more than 200 backpacks and dozens of large boxes of school supplies for the Children’s Fund. And now her group of nurses, called The Professional Performance Committee, is already planning for their next project, to provide clothing and toiletries for a local homeless shelter.
“It’s part of Kaiser Permanente’s mission,” says Mann. “Improving the health of our members and the health of the communities where we work.”