Around 100 volunteers at Ottawa Community Housing (OCH) recently assembled 2,000 backpacks full of school supplies for kids. The Pack-a-Sack program offers an average of $100 worth of school supplies per child for low-income families making less than $2,000 per month.

Around 100 Ottawa Community Housing (OCH) volunteers participated in a 24-hour pack-a-thon during which they packed more than 2,000 backpacks, filling them with school supplies like lunch bags, water bottles, pencils, markers, and geometry sets. The backpacks provide students from junior kindergarten to Grade 11 with the essentials they need to have a successful school year.

Traci Spour-Lafrance, executive director of the Ottawa Community Housing Foundation, shared that the number of backpacks has increased from 500 to 2,000 in the past four years. The program supports all the children and youth living within Ottawa Community Housing who request a backpack.

The Pack-a-Sack program runs entirely on donations. In 2024, it gave out over $60,000 worth of school supplies and has grown larger this year. Rising costs from inflation and tariffs have made school supplies more expensive. A Rakuten survey found that 73% of parents go over budget for back-to-school shopping, and 64% of parents with teens say it’s much more expensive than in past years. Overall, 89% of Canadian parents believe back-to-school costs have gone up recently.