Valley students donate backpacks to children

High school students from Riverdale, Caruthers, Easton and the west side will present Fresno County Sheriff Margaret Mims with backpacks for disadvantaged children on Wednesday.

The students filled the 40 backpacks with stuffed animals, games, activity books, notebooks, pencils, erasers, pens, hand sanitizer, mittens, toothbrushes and toothpaste and hairbrushes and combs.

Rural Route 4-H, which is composed of 50 students from ages 9 to 18, recently completed the community service project, which focused on supporting children who are being removed from homes or other bad situations and relocated to safe places.

“We are very proud of our club in supporting this project and we hope these bags will bring some joy to the kids during a very difficult time,” said Laila Rollin, vice president of Rural Route 4-H.

The group will present the backpacks to Sheriff Mims at 4:30 p.m. in the media room on the second floor of the Fresno County Sheriff’s Office.

This story was originally published May 19, 2015 at 8:04 PM with the headline "Valley students donate backpacks to children."