BY NICK DIAMANTIDES
Staff Writer
About 800 pupils that attend Long Beach schools got free backpacks and school supplies last week and Monday. The giveaways were part of the Fluor Corporation’s “Global Building Futures Project,” which has provided assistance to students of low-income families in nations all over the world for the past eight years.
Last Thursday, more than 500 children came to the Boys and Girls Club in North Long Beach to get their backpacks, and almost 300 more kids got theirs at Webster Elementary School on Monday afternoon.
Fluor is one of the largest engineering construction, procurement and management companies in the world. Locally, the company renovates and maintains several oil refineries, engineers and manages freeway construction, and undertakes large construction projects in the public and private sectors.
In the United States, the Global Building Futures Project operates out of different locations each year. “We normally rotate the schools,” said Margerita Miranda, Fluor spokesperson. “We look for schools in the U.S. Department of Education’s Title One category,” she said. “Those are schools where the majority of the kids live under the poverty level.”
Miranda noted that the contents of the backpacks vary with the grade. “For the younger students, we put spiral notebooks, pencil, pencil boxes and sharpeners, and all of the basic supplies that children need in school,” she explained. “The older children— the ones who are in fourth grade on up— get backpacks with binders, papers, pens, markers and other items that older students use.”
The backpacks themselves cost the company about $14 each, but that is a wholesale price. “We buy them in large quantities because we buy them for kids all over the world,” Miranda explained.
The company donates the backpacks, and Fluor employees all over the world buy the school supplies and other materials needed by students in their regions.
“The supplies for the older kids cost us about $20 per student,” added Julie Mianda-McWhitney, office manager for Fluor’s Long Beach office. “Supplies for the younger kids cost about $15 per pupil.” She noted that the supplies are also purchased in bulk quantities and if a parent were to buy the items, they would spend $35 to $50 depending on the grade level of their child.
Miranda-Whitney added that the Long Beach Fluor office tries to reach out to the local community in a variety of ways. “We want the people who live here to know that we are here to help in any way we can,” she said. “The backpack distribution is one of our more successful projects.” She noted that the approximately 400 employees of the Long Beach office donated their own money to purchase the supplies. “Our employees provided the funds, but if it was not for the Office Depot in Norwalk we could not have afforded to buy such a large quantity,” she said. “If it was not for their willingness to sell us the supplies at less than wholesale prices, we could not have filled as many backpacks.”
“We have employees in Chile and other parts of South America doing the same thing,” Miranda added. “Our employees in China, the Philippines and India are involved in other projects that help disadvantaged students get a better education.”
“We get letters from the kids that tell us how grateful they are for the backpacks and supplies,” Miranda-Whitney said. “That’s what motivates us to keep doing this.” She explained that the Long Beach office has been supplying free backpacks and supplies to needy students for six years.
Ten-year-old Anissa who attends Barton Elementary School said she was very glad to get the supplies. “This will help me do my work,” she explained.
Another Barton student, eight-year-old Tina, said, “I am very glad I got this backpack because I need everything that is in it.”
“It’s cool that we get all these things without having to pay for them,” added 12-year-old Kimiesha, a student at Stevens Middle School
“It’s a good program that helps a lot of kids,” said Joseph Norman, game room supervisor at the Boys and Girls Club. “Most of the kids that come to our facility cannot afford to buy the school supplies they need, much less a nice backpack.”
Don Rodriguez, executive director of the Long Beach chapter of the Boys and Girls Clubs, said he was glad that the North Long Beach club was used as a backpack distribution center. “The mission of the Boys and Girls Clubs is to offer opportunities to kids from disadvantaged circumstances, to have a safe place to go after school, to involve them in fun activities that will help them make wise choices, and to help them do well in school,” he said. “Certainly, giving them the supplies they need for class work and homework is going to benefit them.”
The Fluor Corporation also conducts Adopt a Platoon and Adopt a Family for military personnel stationed overseas and their families during the Christmas season.
