Students and teachers at St. Bede the Venerable School have some extra gifts to be thankful for this year.

The school, 4440 W. 83rd St., got two vanloads of school supplies, playground and gym equipment and other goods from Enchanted Backpack Nov. 12.

“There were all kinds of office supplies and school supplies, like binders and loose-leaf and crayons,” said Sue Saffran, who does marketing and finance for St. Bede the Venerable. “Rugs for preschool and kindergarten. Winter hats, jackets. Post-its, books. A lot of art supplies. It will really help the art supplies.

“Pencils, composition books, construction paper, crayons, pencil sharpeners, dry erase markers and erasers. Earphones and headphones. Scissors. Toothbrushes, toothpaste, deodorant. Sneakers, shirts, long-sleeve hoodies, board games, lots of books,” she said. “It’s huge.”

Saffran got permission to apply for the donation from Enchanted Backpack, a Chicago-based non-profit, after seeing a notice about it a newsletter from the Big Shoulders Fund.

“I just applied and they got in touch, and it was a very quick turnaround,” she said.

The organization has several programs, including the mobile van program, which is open to schools with more than half their students eligible for free or reduced lunches. Each mobile van delivery has an average value of about $40,000, according to the organization.

Other programs include adopt-a-school, which provides a grant of $20,000 for a schoolwide project such as the installation of playground equipment, and a washer-dryer program, which provides a washer, dryer, detergent, dryer sheets and clothes to start a clothes closet for families that don’t have regular access to laundry facilities, said Hillary Fash, Enchanted Backpack’s director.

The non-profit was founded in 2017 by the Lavin Family Foundation. It also accepts individual donations, Fash said.

Other Catholic schools that have received Enchanted Backpack deliveries in the past two years include St. William; Our Lady of Charity, Cicero; St. Angela; Visitation; and Our Lady of Guadalupe.

When the vans arrived at St. Bede, the roughly 200 students were lined up outside with signs and banners expressing their gratitude.

“I guess a lot of deliveries they’ve been doing, they’ve just seen the staff,” Saffran said. “The delivery drivers were very excited to see children.”

Fash said some schools that don’t have students in the building have held Zoom events so the kids can see the donations.

“People have been very creative,” she said.

A week after the delivery, staff at St. Bede were still trying to figure out how to distribute things like coats, which will go to individual students.

“We’re still trying to figure out the student part,” Saffran said. “We’ll probably say, we have X amount of winter jackets in this size. We’ll have them submit their names for it. Just so we know they’re going to kids who can use them.”