Over the last month The B!G Idea team have worked tirelessly to organise and pack over 2000 Swag bags and 91 teacher boxes to send to the 42 schools participating throughout the country. It wasn’t all sweat and tears; in true B!G Idea style there was plenty of banter, planning for the future and an insubordinate amount of sweets to get us all through!
It was certainly a lesson in logistics for all with materials arriving in from every corner of the world to be sorted. Once divided up it was a matter of filling pencil cases, tagging bags with sizes, submitting the right t-shirt size to the right tag and ensuring that every bag contained all the goodies while mixing up the colours. Pencil cases this year will see the students through to Leaving Cert as they are the obligatory see-through ones but in B!G Idea colours and filled with pencil, pen, scissors and tape.
One of the chief principles of The B!G Idea is inclusivity, we want to give every student the opportunity to have access to the equipment they need so they can experience The B!G Idea equally. Swag bags enable this and the teacher packs make it easy for every teacher to deliver the class no matter where they are based.
With the help of some very sprightly mothers and a teenage daughter on her day off from school it took days to complete the process. Once all the bags were filled, we started on the Teacher boxes which were jam packed with A3 paper, Swag bag, notelets and some special treats.
Boxes and bags were then allocated to the appropriate schools with correct numbers and sizes and once ready to go were loaded into a van and whisked away to be couriered out to 21 counties.
What a week! It was tiring but inspiring and so lovely to get some wonderful feedback from teachers on receipt of their provisions.
