Young shopping fan packs it up for kids in need

For as long as Brooklyn Stewart can remember, she has loved shopping for school supplies with her mother.

Loved it so, she decided four years ago to fill 17 backpacks and give them to a children’s charity.

Brooklyn was a kindergartner at the time.

Now 9, she is a seasoned operator among those in Kansas City who help needy kids get ready for school. On Saturday her family’s driveway in the Armour Hills district was covered by more than 200 backpacks with supplies as donors arrived for a “drop-off party.”

“Two hundred twenty three, to be exact, and we have more than an hour left to go,” Brooklyn said early in the afternoon.

She and others will deliver the supplies to children at Salvation Army shelters.

“I just want to make sure the kids there have what they need,” said Brooklyn, who will be a fourth-grader at St. Elizabeth Catholic School in the fall.

For the first time in the four years of “Brooklyn’s Backpack Drive,” the project was promoted on a public Facebook page, drawing the interest of strangers and even a thumbs up from Mayor Sly James.

“Brooklyn had this crazy goal of 200 so we had to go outside our family and friends network,” said her mother, Amanda Stewart. “She’s just fallen in love with this.”

This story was originally published July 29, 2017 at 6:00 PM with the headline "Young shopping fan packs it up for kids in need."