Help4Kids settles in first space with windows and full A/C

Barb Mains and other dedicated volunteers at Help4Kids are thrilled with the new location in Forestbrook, the nonprofit’s first location with windows and full air-conditioning. Mains and her sister started Help4Kids after Hurricane Hugo hit coastal South Carolina in 1989 and has since operated from warehouses.

For a period of time, Mains and her helpers attended to children’s needs from a loading dock. The most recent location was not entirely cooled and heated. “In the summer, they burned up and in the winter they froze to death,” Mains recalled Tuesday at the new headquarters on Forestbrook Road. “This is the first place we’re ever had with windows. We love it.”

The new location is much larger than the one in Garden City Beach which was headquarters for about 10 years. The Forestbrook space was a church and has purple carpeting and green-hued walls. Floor and walls are largely not visible because of well-organized containers of boys and girls clothing, boxes of school supplies, toys and games for birthday presents – and in the space dedicated to Backback Buddies, hundreds of cans of Chef Boyardee mini ravioli. The easy-open cans are part of the Backpack Buddies bags of food given on Fridays to children who qualify for breakfast and lunch at school.

“We really don’t have room [for so much] but I was not about to pass buying all I could get at 50 cents,” Mains said. The Garden City Beach Walmart matched the advertised price of another retailer and then ordered more than Walmart had in stock.

Fully two-thirds of children in Horry County Schools are from families with incomes below the poverty line. Total enrollment, Pre-K through 12, is approximately 50,000. Help4Kids is currently providing 2,000 bags and Mains expects that will increase to 3,000 when elementary schools have complete numbers of those qualified.

A Help4Kids volunteer for more than 20 years, Maria Rojas of Surfside Beach on Tuesday was filling requests for clothing and shoes from school counselors, including a boy whose family had a fire. Rojas packed a second large white plastic with toys and games to replace those lost in the fire.

The weekend food is packed by volunteers on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. Members of the Knights of Columbus of St. Michael parish deliver the bags on Wednesday and Thursday. Prior to the move, thousands of extra white paper bags were packed ahead.

Over the summer, “many, many thousands” of cans of Vienna sausages were collected throughout the area. An impressive number of businesses, churches and service organizations collected the little cans of sausage and other food for Backpack Buddies. “We still get a little flack over giving them Vienna sausages – but not as many phone calls as we used to,” Mains said.

Lakewood Camping Resort held a second annual “BBQ Cook-off” Sept. 25 and Sept. 26 and raised $10,000 for Help4Kids / Backpack Buddies. The total is incomplete because several silent auction items are still out, according to Claude McSwain, director of special events. The event is sanctioned by the S.C. BBQ Association and drew 19 cookers, including some from Virginia and North Carolina.

On Tuesday, coordinator of phone volunteers Kathie Bourque welcomed two new helpers, Elaine Justice of Murrells Inlet and her friend Janine Durkin. Justice said she became acquainted with Help4Kids at one of the three Walmart locations, which hold monthly food drives. Justice and Durkin will be helping one of the area’s most venerable charitable organizations.

This story was originally published September 29, 2015 at 4:36 PM with the headline "Help4Kids settles in first space with windows and full A/C."