Photo by Deb Gau United Way of Southwest Minnesota Stuff the Bus campaign volunteers sort through boxes of scissors, markers, notebooks and other school supplies Wednesday morning at the National Guard Armory in Marshall.

MARSHALL — The new school year hasn’t quite started yet, but on Wednesday area volunteers were helping schools get ready.

They stacked thousands of school supplies, ranging from backpacks to hand sanitizer and full boxes of pencils, on tables in the National Guard Armory in Marshall. The supplies were all donations headed for area schools through United Way of Southwest Minnesota’s annual Stuff the Bus campaign.

This year’s campaign collected more than 56,000 school supply items, that were distributed to a total of 23 public, private and charter schools in United Way of Southwest Minnesota’s service area.

“Our collections were definitely up this year,” as were monetary contributions for the campaign, said Sarah Kicmal, president and CEO of United Way of Southwest Minnesota. It was good news because Stuff the Bus helps area schools make sure kids have the tools they need to learn.

“All of our schools rely on these supplies to really help meet their needs,” she said.

Wednesday was distribution day for Stuff the Bus. In the morning, volunteers organized the school supplies at the Armory. Then, equipped with checklists, the volunteers divided out packages for each school to pick up later in the day. Between unloading supplies at the Armory on Tuesday and helping with distribution, a total of 36 volunteers made this year’s Stuff the Bus event happen, Kicmal said.

The program also relies on contributions from area residents. Kicmal said this year collection containers were set out at a total of 21 locations throughout United Way of Southwest Minnesota’s service area. A total of 10 workplaces in different communities also held internal drives to collect school supplies. In addition to collecting donated supplies, United Way of Southwest Minnesota also buys some school supplies in bulk, Kicmal said.