PLAINS — For the fifth year, the Church on the Move and their Plains Community Clothing Bank, hosted free back-to-school shopping. They had backpacks, clothes, shoes and all sorts of school supplies available to any Sanders County child.
“I’m doing back-to-school shopping for my kids at the church once a year,” Kara Allestad said. ”They helped save me a lot of money the last couple of years.”
Allestad, a Sanders County mother of four, brought her oldest child to get ready for the new school year.
“Last year, we moved for a year and it cost us over $600 to buy four kids just school supplies. That's lacking the new clothes. It was a very expensive year without this, so being back in town was really helpful this year,” she said. “My oldest is really stoked to do this again.”
Event coordinator, Jessica Peterson, said this is exactly what the event was designed to do. For two days, families can come by the Plains Community Clothing Bank and shop without worrying about the cost.
“It started about 5 years ago. After COVID, a lot of the families here, it just kind of struck really hard,” she said. “Sanders County is one of the lowest income communities here in Montana. So, this is just a great way to help the families out, just a leg up, if anything. We felt that there was a need, and we filled it.”
Between events on Saturday and Tuesday, around 80 children stocked up for the new semester. Supplies came from donations and were purchased with funds from a yard sale, which raised more than $3,000 dollars.
Peterson estimates that the events have helped about 500 Sanders County students.
“There's a lot of ladies that came in and helped put this together, from hanging clothes to stocking, cleaning shoes and things like that,” she said. “But, anybody can do this and that's the beauty about this, is any small town can do this.”
Allestad told MTN that she feels grateful for the shopping trip. She said events like this are only becoming more important to families.
“I think all communities should have something similar,” she said. “It's super helpful. The price of living going up has made it really hard to raise this many kids, especially in Montana.”
