September 7, 2017

Students in Texas are back in school but summer ended earlier for their teachers and for school staff, who spent the last couple of weeks getting ready for the start of the year. Texas Mutual employees were there to help, sending volunteers to Austin’s Lucy Read Pre-Kindergarten in partnership with the United Way for Greater Austin, and making donations to BookSpring, a nonprofit dedicated to early childhood literacy for lower income students, and Irving Schools Foundation’s Supplies for Success program in Dallas.

Thirty-five volunteers helped out at Lucy Read in Austin. They decorated, arranged furniture, made ID cards, laid colored tape paths on the floor to help students navigate the school hallways, organized the school’s office supplies and pulled weeds in nearly 20 garden beds around the campus. Texas Mutual donated glue sticks, colored pencils, construction paper, folders and other supplies, and our volunteers sorted them into 360 school supply packs topped off with good luck messages for the year. Because of Texas Mutual’s donation and the volunteers who assembled the packs, every student enrolled will have the school supplies they need for the school year, taking the burden off of parents.

“I really like to be involved with our community service projects, especially with the school opportunities that we have,” said Brittany Rusciano, a Texas Mutual IT systems analyst who volunteered at Lucy Read.

She added, “I don’t think that the education system always gets the attention that it needs, so every little bit that we can help out, even if that’s just lending a hand to put some posters up or pull some weeds, that means a lot to me, and I think it means a lot to the community and the kids going to these schools.”

In addition to our Lucy Read visit, employees in our special investigations division organized a book drive for the Austin nonprofit BookSpring. They collected 219 books which will be donated to children learning to read.

"I have a big heart for books and the work that BookSpring does is very important to me," said Fraud Investigator Mari Mendez, who helped organize the book drive.

Jill Gonzalez, BookSpring’s associate director, added: “This donation was very exciting because we serve 40,000 kids in the Central Texas area and we take donations every day. We take in and give out between one and three thousand books a month, so every book helps and every book makes a difference.”

In Dallas, our employees raised $2,700 dollars to purchase 250 backpacks filled with school supplies. These were for students ranging from kindergarten to high school seniors and were part of Supplies for Success’ 6,800 overall donated packs. Nineteen Texas Mutual employees helped the Supplies for Success program distribute the backpacks to Irving families.

“It’s very rewarding to help out,” said Regina Glessner, a Texas Mutual underwriter who helped distribute the backpacks. “First of all, the amount of backpacks that you see there is incredible. Then it’s great to see the families that come through, and how appreciative they are that the community comes together like this for them. It’s just amazing how many families you really do touch who would not have been able to afford school supplies for their student.”

This year wasn’t the first time that our employees helped schools kick off the academic year. The United Way is one of our primary nonprofit partners, and we have been involved with their back-to-school efforts for the last five years. This is the third year that our Dallas office has organized for Supplies for Success.

“I think it’s awesome that Texas Mutual lets us do this,” Brittany, who volunteered at Lucy Read Pre-Kindergarten in Austin, said. “It’s an investment for Texas Mutual to allow us to do these things and I think it shows that they really care about the community.”