Disney drive benefits local students, teachers

Hamlin’s Steven Miller, a senior manager with Walt Disney World External Affairs, dug into a cardboard box looking for notebooks. 

He brought them to a table for them to be counted and set aside with the hundreds of other notebooks Disney cast members collected during its annual Back-to-School Supply Drive to donate to A Gift for Teaching. 

Photo by Liz Ramos

Within 30 minutes of the second group of cast members coming together to sort supplies for distribution Friday, Aug. 8, the cast members reached 100,000 school supplies. 

After cheers and applause from the dozens of cast members, Stitch from “Lilo & Stitch” joined the celebration for photo opportunities. 

As 206,372 students were welcomed back to school in Orange County alone Monday, Aug. 11, the supply drive came at the perfect time. 

A Gift for Teaching provides thousands of items of school supplies to close to 13,000 teachers throughout Orange, Osceola, Lake, Seminole and Polk counties each year. Disney has worked with A Gift for Teaching since 1998, providing close to $190 million worth of school supplies since the nonprofit’s inception, Miller said. In the past five years alone, Disney collected about 360,000 school supplies. 

“What this demonstrates is the deep care that our cast members have for the community in Central Florida,” Miller said. “Living here, they see the needs that people have. They want to take care of the community and want to give back.”

Besides the Back-to-School Supply Drive, Miller said Disney has been working with A Gift for Teaching for the past four years to provide a program for new teachers in which supplies are delivered directly to their schools to help them feel more connected and valued.

Miller said the school supplies will give teachers and students a head start on the school year. 

“It’s been great, my career here, and it’s moments like this when you see the impact,” he said. “I think about the kid who’s going to be coming into the classroom and he had this list, but he didn’t have supplies. Now, he has a whole backpack full of stuff he doesn’t have to worry about. The parents don’t have to worry about it. That’s a great thing.”

Jane Thompson, president of A Gift for Teaching, said seeing the cast members in full force sorting school supplies was overwhelming. 

“It’s just such a reminder of what our partnership with Walt Disney World has meant for the past 25 years, seeing all these cast members here sorting the amazing amount of donations that have been generously gifted because they love teachers,” she said. “They want teachers not to have to spend their own money. Ultimately, we all want every student to be successful in the classroom. This is just a joy.”

Thompson said right now is a tough time to be a teacher and for many families in the community, so providing supplies is imperative. Donating the supplies helps students feel less isolated, sets aside any stigma a child might feel for not having supplies and alleviates stress on parents who are struggling to afford supplies. 

Photo by Liz Ramos

“I used to get anything I needed and brand new clothes to go back to school and to think that that is just such a struggle for more than 70% of our families here in Central Florida, it’s pretty shocking,” she said. 

Disney’s Back-to-School Supply Drive is the A Gift for Teaching’s largest supply drive. Thompson said the nonprofit will typically generate enough supplies to provide a third of the essential school supplies needed throughout the school year. 

Miller watched dozens of cast members in their VoluntEARS shirts dive into the more than 45 boxes filled with school supplies and bring them to tables to be sorted and counted. 

Stacey Cree, a cast member for 19 years, went through the boxes to find as many packages of pens she could carry in her arms. Meanwhile, 20-year cast member Keith Drosehn counted boxes of crayons. The Back-to-School Supply Drive has been a tradition for several long-standing cast members, including Cree and Drosehn.

“Teachers spend long hours educating kids, and really they care so much about the kids, so to me, it gives me such a feeling of gratitude that our cast members care this deeply to spend time not only collecting supplies and sorting but finding other ways to volunteer throughout the year to give back to others,” Miller said.