Twenty-Seven School Districts in Greater Iowa to Receive School Supplies

Several partners have united to bring over $200,000 worth of school supplies to rural Iowa schools. These materials were made available through Teacher Tools 4 Tomorrow and were distributed by HyVee Corporation. Coordinating organizations include Iowa’s rural electric cooperatives and independent telecommunications companies through the Ripple Effect partnership and Iowa Area Development Group (IADG).

Teacher Tools 4 Tomorrow, a non-profit school supply organization located in Waukee, is part of a national program that receives large quantities of surplus (new) school and office supply items from “big box” stores that can be redistributed and donated to qualifying (free and reduced lunch program) school systems. Teacher Tools 4 Tomorrow coordinators, Todd and Diane Halbur, have been providing school supplies to schools in the greater Des Moines metro area for a few years. “We are so pleased to have this partnership which now allows us to broaden our distribution to help teachers and students in rural Iowa,” said Todd Halbur. The goods were delivered in early January.  Hy-Vee Corporation joined the effort and transported a total of 40 pallets of school supplies to over 27 rural school districts and over 12,000 thousand Iowa students.  

Iowa’s rural electric cooperatives and independent telecommunications companies through IADG and Ripple Effect are very pleased to bring this effort together to help support excellent learning environments for teachers and students. Bruce Hansen, Vice President Business Development stated, “it is tremendous to see partnerships at work, and when opportunities like this come up the combination of committed local leaders and our rural utilities can really make things happen quickly.”   

IADG is the business and community development office for Iowa’s electric cooperatives, member municipal systems and independent telecommunication companies.