Teacher Reuse Store

Your gift will allow us to rent a space to open a Teacher Reuse Store where Forsyth County teachers can shop for FREE classroom supplies in July 2020.

Teachers retire, change grade levels, or simply do not have sufficient space to store their end of school year supplies. With 38 public schools in Forsyth County, this leaves an overwhelming abundance of reusable resources, manipulatives, books, games, puzzles, classroom decorations, and the similar with no other place to go but the landfill.

Teachers often “dip into their own pockets – to the tune of at least $459 every year, according to a new analysis by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) for school supplies. . . . Nine out of 10 educators will not be reimbursed for their back-to-school purchases, whether it’s pencils, notebooks, whiteboards, posters, even software.”   (neaToday, 8/25/2019, Teacher Spending on School Supplies: A State-by-State Breakdown by Tim Walker).

The Teacher Reuse Store is an opportunity to keep valuable materials out of the landfill and put them back in the hands of Forsyth County's teachers at no cost to the teachers.

Last year, we held a pop up store.  From six of our 38 public schools, 11 pallets of materials were collected.  Volunteers, primarily retired teachers, sorted and organized the materials, and in July 2019, 163 teachers from public, private and home schools in Forsyth County came and shopped for FREE.

We were going to have another pop up store in partnership with our school system in June, but due to Covid-19, it has been cancelled, and we can no longer use the space the system was going to provide.

We are getting the word out to teachers that they can drop off their classroom clean outs at homes of volunteers, as we are not permitted to pick up materials at schools due to Covid-19.  We already have tons  of resources stored in volunteers’ homes, and anticipate receiving much more in May, as teachers return to schools to clean out their classrooms.

This effort is completely organized by volunteers.  Reaping Nature is the purpose and passion of two women who met as PTA moms 15 years ago.  

Please consider donating $5, $10, $25 or more to our cause’s goal.