The Beginning — Operation School Bell began in 1987 providing new school clothes to 214 students. Over the years, children from kindergarten through sixth grade have come with their parents to the Assistance League of Victor Valley Operation School Bell office and received two complete sets of school clothes and a winter coat from caring member volunteers.

Result — Since the Operation School Bell program began, over 30,000 local children have received school clothing. We now average 1,400 students and 20 clothing events per year.

In 2022-2023 alone, we helped serve 1,343 students during 22 shopping events at Target and JCPenney’s. In addition we fulfilled 17 requests for specific items such as coats and underwear. We clothed students from all eight school districts in the High Desert:  Adelanto Unified, Apple Valley Unified, Helendale, Hesperia Unified, Lucerne Valley, Oro Grande, Victor Elementary, and Victor Union High School.

Today — Students from grade K – 12 attend shopping events at two local department stores where they choose their own school-appropriate clothing, with the help of their parents and Assistance League member volunteers.  We are excited to be partnering with Target and JC Penney.  Each of the 22 events in 2022-2023 required at least 10 volunteers to help families shop, verify the total of their purchases, and assist with checkout.  That number itself is 880 volunteer hours. However, the total number of hours reported for Operation School Bell was 1,234! Our Assisteens were also working hard volunteering their time assembling 1,600 grooming kits and also working at several clothing events!

The results of the 2019 Outcome survey of the local school staff partnering with Assistance League of Victor Valley’s Operation School Bell program, indicates that 64% of participating students demonstrated a positive change in classroom behavior, confidence and level of engagement with peers and/or school activities, with 21% of students demonstrating a significant change. Operation School Bell resulted in an 84% positive impact on our students.

The goal of Operation School Bell is to help school age children succeed in school by providing new school clothing, health assistance, literacy programs, cultural and higher educational enrichment and to also address hunger problems. Assistance League of Victor Valley will continue to address all the five points of the star as shown in the Operation School Bell Star.

We are grateful to receive so many wonderful letters of thanks!