Stationery sought for a good cause

Pens, crayons, pencils, erasers and rulers cluttering office drawers and old school pencil cases can now be put to good use thanks to a campaign by an Albany business.

Albany Office Products is collecting stationery for Cambodian school students and is encouraging the whole community to get on board between now and the new school year.

Store owner Tracey Jerrard said the idea for the campaign came about when she noticed most parents were buying new stationery for their children each year and wondered where their old pens and pencils were going.

“As kids were coming back in with full school lists and I was asking where the old things were going and parents were saying they were putting them into big boxes,” she said.

“The boxes are getting bigger so let’s give them to someone who needs them.”

Go Cambodia group leader Sherree Hughes, who is planning to take the stationery to Cambodia next year, said the donations would be distributed at rural schools.

“For the parents to send their children to school, it’s a huge sacrifice, so just to provide simple things like stationery, paper, pens and pencils is an added burden to them,” she said.

“It’s often things that we throw away that we don’t think twice about, it means so little to us but so much to them.”

Donations need to be of good quality and small enough to fit into a pencil case and can be made at the Sanford Road store between now and February.