There are over 150 homeless veterans in Bergen County. A group of sophomores have helped to make them feel a little more appreciated via Operation Backpack by promoting this cause to the Pascack Valley students. 

Operation Backpack is an organization that purchases hygiene items and other basic necessities and organizes backpacks to send to homeless veterans throughout Bergen County. Operation Backpack is run by the Bergen County Tracers, which supports the same cause of assisting homeless veterans. The American Legion is a branch of the Bergen County Tracers which is centralized in Hillsdale, New Jersey. 

“What Operation Backpack wants to do is collect backpacks, sweatshirts, jackets, toiletries like toothbrushes, toothpaste, deodorant, hand warmers, socks, stuff like that. You know, if people are living on the streets in cold weather, it will make their hard times a little bit better,” said Ms. Marisa Mathias, a US I History teacher here at PV and fundraising head for Operation Backpack.

In addition to hygiene items and the like, the participating sophomores have also collected gift certificates for restaurants and other assorted places to give to the veterans. They have purchased over $200 worth of gift certificates from Subway, McDonalds, Shoprite, Burger King, and Dunkin Donuts, to name a few. The number of gift cards collected could easily purchase hundreds of hot meals for the homeless veterans.

However, the biggest contribution was in the form of the $890 that was collected by students of PV. This money was used to buy gift certificates and additional toiletries for the veterans.

The sophomores involved were Rachel White, Stephanie Perini, Julia Ganbarg, Jennifer La Rocca, Jenna Szabo, Allison Botwinick, Sarah Daniels, Shannon Donnelly, Amanda Hirschberg, Nicole Franklin, Lauren Hussey, Dominique Perini, Amanda Bifulco, Julia Lomicky, and Kai Neilsen.

These students collected the money by going around to history classes and walking around during lunch, asking people to donate money to this charity.

The sophomore girls and Mathias found out about Operation Backpack when the veterans came into one of their classes on Veteran’s Day and informed them about it.

“I just posed it to my classes; if anybody wants to help organize and do this we’ll do it, and a bunch of girls stepped up and said that they would do it,” said Mathias.

The classes that contributed the most money were Mathias’s 5th and 2nd period classes as of the last collection day, Dec. 18. Her 5th period class collected $120, and her 2nd period class came in a close second with $117.

Overall, Operation Backpack was a huge success, according to Mathias and her students. PV has made such a huge contribution that there’s a possibility that we will promote and support this cause sometime in the future as well.