EquipmentShare Branches Help Students Start Fresh With School Supplies

Miami’s three EquipmentShare branches collaborate often to make sure their South Florida customers get the equipment they need. They tapped into the same spirit of cooperation in August to help area kids get what they need to start a new school year.

The Miami branches filled three large bucket attachments with supplies and delivered them to three nearby schools as part of EquipmentShare’s Back to School Buckets program. 

“We’re fortunate, and we should help those who are less fortunate,” said Roy Medina, the GM of EquipmentShare’s CASE Power & Equipment Florida dealership in Miami. “We’re in a position to do that, so why not?”

Back to School Buckets is an annual event that’s part of EquipmentShare’s Giving Back mission. This year, 51 branches across the nation participated. Each participating branch devoted $500 of its annual Giving Back budget to buy backpacks and placed bucket attachments in their stores that employees filled with pencils, crayons, notebooks and other supplies. Then they donated those items to the schools of their choice.

“I sent an email to everybody and said, ‘Can you please pitch in? We need to do this for our community,’” said Lorena Bonilla Valle, the GM of Miami’s rental branch. “Everybody pitched in. People who didn’t want to shop for supplies themselves, I would tell them to Venmo me the money and I would go. So I made a whole bunch of trips to the store.”

On Aug. 25, the Miami GMs delivered their supplies to West Hollywood Elementary School, Avocado Elementary School and Colonial Christian School. Those gifts will help set up young students for success in the new school year. 

“I grew up very underprivileged, and there were a lot of years I didn’t have any school supplies and had to reuse paper and use the pencils down to their little nubs,” said Rene Valdes, the GM of Miami’s Advanced Solutions branch. “Every time I was given new school supplies through my church, it was amazing. I am very fortunate to be a part of a company like EquipmentShare that does this. It’s something near and dear to my heart, because there are a lot of people who grew up like me. These donations might not seem like much to us, but they mean a lot to a kid.”

Learn more about EquipmentShare’s commitment to giving back to the communities it serves.