ORANGE PARK – Local charity SKOA Inc. needs your help for a successful backpack drive ahead of the 2020-21 school year.

Kenyatta Hogan started SKOA Inc. in 2013 when she was just 10 years old. It has organized food drives, Thanksgiving basket drives and so much more. SKOA Inc. will hold its second backpack drive on Aug. 22, and Hogan and her charity could use the help of Clay County residents.

“Because of COVID-19, things have been very different,” Hogan said. “Instead of walk-thru drives, the days of charity are now drive-thrus. We’re also having a harder time gathering supplies for our drives.”

Hogan said SKOA Inc. usually has a table set up at the Orange Park Farmer’s Market held on select Sundays throughout the month and that this table is responsible for a lot of donations that usually fill backpacks upon backpacks for the charity’s drives. With the coronavirus upsetting the farmer’s market schedule, the donations have slowed to a crawl.

“I think people are at a loss of what to do and how to do it,” Hogan said. “We don’t have too many people donate anyway in the grand scheme of things but the people that do, they’re at a loss right now.”

Hogan said if people contact SKOA Inc. through skoainc@gmail.com, she will work to set up an easy and efficient way to deliver donations. She would even drive to someone’s house to pick up the donations. The backpack drive on Aug. 22 will also serve as a food drive in partnership with Florida Farm Share.

Hogan remembers handing out food at a Farm Share food drive and coming up with the idea of a backpack drive after seeing children with their parents.

“If they’re having trouble getting food, they’re probably having trouble getting school supplies,” Hogan said. “That’s where the idea of this backpack drive came from. We give families backpacks filled with school supplies.”

This drive hits close to home for Hogan because she remembers enduring the same hardships earlier in her life. She would receive a list of supplies she needs from her teachers and realize it wouldn’t be a possibility for her family to afford all of the supplies she needed.

“That’s tough and to know that I might be remedying that for others, it makes me really happy,” she said.