Education Without Boarders | Operation Rise Above 10-03-2020

Approximately 20 percent of youth in Los Angeles suffer from poverty, which interferes with their ability to purchase essential school supplies, and thus access a quality education. In addition, the pandemic has created further disruption for students as classes temporarily halted, interrupting learning. To help mitigate these issues, SLYO and Project POH have partnered with Migalay’s Tamales restaurant and Yasel Puig’s Wild Horse Foundation to create the Operation Rise above initiative. The purpose of the initiative was to provide essential school supplies such as pens, backpacks, pencils, crayons, and colored pencils to underprivileged youth residing in the San Fernando Valley district. The event was hosted at Migalay’s Tamales Mexican restaurant on Saturday, October 3rd 2020 and was facilitated successfully with the help of many enthusiastic volunteers. Overall, school supplies were given to approximately 700 school-aged youth. SLYO and Project POH were grateful for the funds and essential school supplies provided by their sponsors: TJ Maxx Westlake Village, Kinecta Federal Credit Union, Sri Lanka Foundation, Team Rugby LA, the Go-Fund me donations and Facebook donations. As a result of the donations, SLYO was able to purchase 700 backpacks with school supplies to provide to youth and families in need. The committee was also able to provide these individuals with free packaged meat sponsored by Yasel Puig’s Wild Horse Foundation. SLYO and Project POH would like to extend a special thank you to all the people that donated funds or supplies to make this event possible. Overall, Operations Rise Above, was able to help children ranging from Kindergarten to High School obtain important school supplies to help them get through the school year.