INTERSPAR customers supported around 1500 disadvantaged students by donating school supplies

Customers raised more than 58,000 pieces of school equipment items and bought close to 2 million forints worth of donation cards to support the second annual joint school supply collection campaign between The Hungarian Charity Service of the Order of Malta and SPAR Hungary organised for the second time in 2022. The store chain donated a further one million forints on top of the amount raised.

The “Joy to Give!” school supply collection campaign enabled shoppers to support underprivileged students at the beginning of the school year with donations in Hungarian INTERSPAR hypermarkets. Shoppers could buy donation cards between 20 July and 4 September 2022, and they could buy school supplies such as exercise books, stationary, pencil cases, school bags, PE bags, and other useful supplies instore and hand them over to the volunteers. Monetary donations are exchanged for more school supplies by the charity service, and they will be delivered with the rest of the donations at the beginning of September to the disadvantaged families.

“This year, the Hungarian Charity Service of the Order of Malta again supports the families of 1,500 children with new school supplies, PE accessories, and school bags full of necessary supplies with the help of the customers of the store chain. The heavy costs that come with the beginning of the school year are a burden for a lot of Hungarian families. These donations help those in the most disadvantaged situations and prevent their children from having to start school missing essential or even all their school supplies. We thank our customers who purchased notebooks, stationary items, pencil cases, or other supplies at the end of August in INTERSPAR stores to support the donation campaign, as well as those who bought our donation cards to do their bit to support our campaign. With the help of SPAR Hungary, 300 school supply bags, each worth 10,000 forints, were added to the donations collected during the campaign,” said Tamás Romhányi, head of communications of the Hungarian Charity Service of the Order of Malta.

“We owe our customers a big thank you, who after last year’s successful school supply collection campaign supported the initiative again this year and were glad to help the families in need. As a result, the customers of INTERSPAR and the SPAR online shop, who purchased the donation cards contributed more than 1.9 million forints during the campaign. They also bought 58,267 school supply items in the hypermarkets between 24-27 August 2022, which they then handed over to the volunteers of the Hungarian Charity Service of the Order of Malta. Our company donated a further one million forints to top this up as part of our social responsibility agenda. Having witnessed the success of the school supply collection campaigns over the previous two years, we are determined to continue the ‘Joy to Give!’ initiative in this aspect as well,” added Márk Maczelka, head of communications at SPAR Hungary.

The Hungarian Charity Service of the Order of Malta has been the strategic partner of the store chain for 25 years.  As a result of this donation campaign, the organisation collected more than 32,000 notebooks, 18,000 stationary items, 479 pencil cases, 75 school bags and a further 6,000 other creative tools to be delivered to families in need. They also prepare 300 school supply packages, each worth 10,000 forints, from the money they raised with the donation cards. These will help the kids of the families who are on the radar of the charity service to have all school supplies they need to start the new school year.

Images attached to the press release are available in SPAR Médiatár, at the address http://mediatar.spar.hu/. The interface also enables downloading additional public images from SPAR. When using the images, please credit the photos to “spar.hu”.