Project SOS is back in session: How to help students in need

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (Dakota News Now) - The Banquet’s Project S.O.S. is back for the summer, and registration is now open for families seeking a free backpack filled with school supplies ahead of the upcoming school year.

The S.O.S. stands for Supply Our Students, and the program distributes backpacks stocked with composition books, colored pencils, water bottles, lunchboxes, and other supplies. What started with 60 backpacks in its first year has grown to between 7,000 and 8,000 backpacks distributed free of charge annually.

Families can register through either The Banquet’s website or the 211 Helpline website.

“All of our donation boxes are going out to the Lewis’s, the Hy-Vee’s, and the Wal-Mart’s today, and so people can pick up those items and just drop those in the box at the store if they’d like, or bring them down to our downtown location,” said Tamera Jerke-Liesinger, The Banquet’s executive director. “Every year we seem to need composition books, scissors, the large and the small scissors, and then obviously the staples, your glue, your crayons, your folders, that type of thing.”

According to the Consumer Price Index, prices for books and supplies rose 9.4% in May 2025 compared to the previous year.

“We are already fielding a lot of calls from parents wanting to sign their children up to receive a backpack,” said Jerke-Liesinger. “What we do hear from the school district every year, be it teachers, counselors, principals, is how grateful they are for Project SOS because it lifts the burden off of them as well. When they’re seeing kids come into school with everything they need, being comfortable because they have all the things the other children have, it makes their academic year just go so much better.”

The Banquet does not require any proof of need to receive a backpack with supplies, but does ask that caregivers provide a student ID for their child and the school and grade they will be in.