What we do

Mission

We will help relieve poverty and misfortune to disadvantaged school students and their families by donating educational resources through diverse community collaborations.

We will minimise our environmental impact by reusing and recycling stationery that would otherwise go to landfill.

We will support disadvantaged groups of people such, youth, elderly, unemployed, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders and those with disability.

What we do

We collect, sort, clean, renew and donate excess and used education resources by creating booklist and stationery boxes to disadvantaged students to start the school year.

We are growing this new social enterprise to divert stationery waste from landfill and aim to support more disadvantaged school students and their families. We aim to achieve a full circular economy by continuing to renew, reuse and recycle where possible.

As a not for profit organisation, we always need financial support to purchase:

• school booklist items we don’t receive;
• to grow; and
• to keep our administrative functions operating.

If you can help in any way please donate  (add hyperLINK to donation page) today or contact us (add hyperLINK to contact page) to become a corporate sponsor.

Our Purpose

Our main object is to pursue the following charitable purpose(s):

1. To relieve poverty and misfortune by providing school book and stationery resources to destitute students and families that are in times of hardship and financial distress and who cannot afford to purchase school stationery supplies and books for their children to start the school year.
2. To assist destitute students and families with educational needs by providing school stationery and book list packs to:

• • local school students from a range of disadvantaged backgrounds; and
  • local kindergartens, primary and secondary schools from disadvantaged backgrounds.

1. To assist vulnerable and disadvantaged groups such as youth, elderly, unemployed and those with a disability by creating volunteering and employment opportunities in areas of the operation such as collection, sorting, cleaning, renewing and packing school stationery and booklists.
2. Manage school waste by collecting excess and used school books and stationery supplies that area in good condition, diverting items from landfill and enhancing the natural environment by:

• • promoting the reuse of renewed stationery supplies and books;
  • recycling where stationery supplies and books cannot be renewed; and
  • providing used and excess school stationery collection points and recycling stations in accessible areas in collaboration with the wider community

Background

Stationery Aid was created in 2020 by Alison and Jan Schutt who found a need to collect excess and perfectly usable school stationery to prevent it from going to landfill. It became our purpose to help students and families experiencing destitution and hardship, after being made aware of the very serious need to support local disadvantaged students and families with educational resources. To make Stationery Aid a reality in 2020, we established valued partnerships with many local community groups, schools and volunteers that align with our purpose to commence our journey towards making a difference creating positive change for people and environment.

2020 Pilot Program

The valuable contribution from our community, schools, organisations and businesses during our pilot phase, greatly helped us achieve our core objectives of helping our local disadvantaged students and families in need of educational resources and minimising perfectly usable stationery waste from entering landfill.

After much hard work with the support of at least 36 volunteers from across our community, we:

• • Received approximately 80 x 120 L recycling bins full of stationery supplies;
  • Diverted approximately 70 recycling bins of used and unused stationery from landfill, keeping in mind that we had many new supplies donated;
  • Sorted, cleaned, renewed and categorised supplies into storage and most importantly;
  • Created 97 booklist and stationery boxes that reached 106 disadvantaged students across 13 schools in Brisbane and 1 in Mackay.