Organization provides students with missing essentials

A nonprofit that helps students with such essentials as shoes is planning to open a center in the Brandon area

OASIS Network of New Tampa plans to open a new location "probably somewhere between Brandon and Plant City," Executive Director Ginger Bean said.

OASIS — Outreach Assisting Students in Schools — provides clothing, shoes, and other personal and necessary items to Hillsborough County public school students in need.

This will be the fourth OASIS facility in Hillsborough County. The others are in New Tampa, south Tampa and east Tampa.

Social workers with the school district would be able to go to the facility 24 hours a day to obtain the items, said Leslie Farrell, whose public relations firm, Farrell Communications Inc., is working for free with OASIS.

"They get everything free, without bureaucracy," Farrell said.

Most of the clothes, which are gently used, are donated. Monetary gifts allow OASIS volunteers to buy items like socks, shoes, undergarments, toiletries and alarm clocks.

"Social workers noted a lot of tardy students," said Bean, explaining the need for alarm clocks. "If mom works a graveyard shift and a child can't wake himself up, he's late for school. We started giving out alarm clocks and the social workers reported a decrease in tardies. The clocks are a huge help."

OASIS, established in 2001, receives no public aid; instead, it runs on money from service clubs, businesses and local foundations. It is "run strictly by volunteers, except for two part-time, paid staff [funded by a grant]," Farrell said.

OASIS currently serves about 10,000 students a year.

"That's not big in relation to the number of students in need," Bean said. "There are about 192,000 students in the Hillsborough County public schools system, the eighth largest school district in the country. When we started 10 years ago, about 48 percent qualified for the federal free lunch program; now about 60 percent qualify. That's more than 100,000 students.

"If a family can't feed their children, probably they can't clothe them, either."

The school district will provide a classroom or portable for OASIS to use for storage, said Bean, but the first step toward opening a location in greater Brandon is finding volunteers who can pick up clothes, bring them to the facility and sort them.

"We need a dedicated group of volunteers to manage the new site," Bean said. "Perhaps a service club, church organization or women's group can provide a pool of 15 to 20, of whom five to eight would be needed weekly."

For information or to volunteer, go to www.oasis-network.org or call (813) 975-8179.

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