It started with giving — and then listening.
Last year, during Operation Backpack 2025, we delivered backpacks filled with school supplies to children who needed them: notebooks, textbooks, pens, pencils — the essentials. Because every child deserves to walk into class ready.
But we didn’t stop at giving. We asked the children a question: now that you have these, what else do you need?
Their answers were humbling. Not toys. Not games. A mathematical set. A ruler. A calculator.
The tools they need to keep up in class, to finish their homework properly, to feel like they belong in that classroom.
When a child’s wish list is a ruler, you don’t just hear it. You carry it with you.
🎥 They Asked for Supplies — Operation Backpack 2026
That’s the children themselves, telling us what would make the difference. We listened.
Our volunteers had packed a thousand backpacks — zipped, checked, stacked with care — and delivered them to schools across Ghana and under-resourced communities across Canada.
But the mathematical sets, the rulers, the calculators — the very things the children named — we couldn’t include. Not yet. We didn’t have the funds.
Our mission is school supplies — nothing more, nothing less — and we want to do it properly, not halfway.
So this is our promise for 2026: 15,000 backpacks, each one carrying what the children actually asked for.
We can’t do it alone. We still need funding to fulfill their wish list — the math sets, the rulers, the calculators. That’s where you come in.
🧡 Donate now via Zeffy — help us give them what they asked for.
Hundreds of children received backpacks last year. Thousands more are waiting — in classrooms across two countries, asking for the same simple things: the tools to learn.
They told us what they need. Now we need your support to deliver it.
The Shidaa Foundation is a registered Canadian charity serving children in Canada and Ghana.