University Mall Hosts Back To School Events

CHAPEL HILL -As your students get ready to go back to school, University Mall is holding a back to school day on August 24.

The event gives families an opportunity to visit with PTA members and other organizations, and will have a number of free activities for kids to take part in.  Community Director for University Mall, Jeanette Gulledge says the program was inspired by the people in the Chapel Hill/Carrboro City School district.

“They came to us many years ago and wanted an opportunity to gather together the PTA organizations and some of the school representatives to meet the parents and the community, and get a lot questions answered before the school starts” Gulledge said.

Some of the activities that will be taking place at the event include make and take art with Kidzu, creating personalized trail mix recipes, personalizing binders with the scrap exchange, and demonstrations by the bouncing bulldogs and other groups.  Gullege says that the community has helped the event to grow.

“The community is very supportive of the event and different organizations wanted to take part, so every year we get a lot of after school programs like Boy Scouts, and Girl Scout, the Bouncing Bulldogs will be performing” Gullegde commented.

Performance Auto Mall has partnered with University Mall to hold a School Supply drive through the end of the month; the goal is to fill a Subaru Outback with school supplies that are donated.

Around University Mall there are red bins that you can put school supplies into to donate to the drive.  Several of the stores in the U-Mall will give discounts or free items if you donate from the list of supplies.  Marketing Director of Performance Auto Mall, Jill McCullough, says they partnered to make the School Drive better than last year.

“Performance Subaru, we held our own school supply drive last year, and we thought this year if we combine our efforts with University mall we can make it bigger and better and really yield a great result” said McCullough.

These events are among the several that are going on in the area to help raise school supplies for teachers and students.  Additionally on August 24 there will be drawing for a $500 shopping spree at Dillard’s.

For a list of acceptable supplies for the school drive click here.

The event will start at 10 a.m and will continue until 2 p.m