A Central Iowa organizations’ misfortunes have turned into a blessing for students in eight southwest Iowa counties, who will be the beneficiaries of free school supplies. “Teacher Tools 4 Tomorrow” is a volunteer run, FREE store for qualifying teachers in Iowa. The Des Moines store was established to allow teachers of qualifying schools to shop at no cost to them for the supplies that they need to educate the students in their classrooms.

The non-profit group usually works with metro schools to provide the supplies, but because they’ve lost their warehouse, the excess school supplies must be removed from the facility in the Des Moines area.  Adams County Community Economic Development Executive Director Beth Waddle says it’s the first time they’ve been able to partner with Teacher Tools For Tomorrow. 15 pallets of school supplies were donated to help eight area schools, including: Corning, Prescott, Villisca, Lenox, Cumberland-Anita-Massena, Orient-Macksburg, Bedford and Clearfield.

Capital Sanitary Supply and Hy-Vee transported the pallets to Corning. Precision Pulley and Idler allowed use of its facility to store and sort the items. Akin Building Center provided supplies to sort and wrap the boxes. Corning Rotary Club and Southwest Iowa REC brought in volunteers to help sort the items. The schools were then notified to come to Corning to pick up their free materials.