When Jacqueline Tatelman and her husband, Scot Tatelman, founded a nonprofit summer camp for hundreds of kids growing up in New York’s under-funded neighborhoods in 2009, they didn’t yet know that the experience would lay the foundation for a new business with a major give-back mission: STATE Bags.
Image Credit: Courtesy of STATE Bags. Jacqueline Tatelman.
“The first couple of summers, [campers] were coming to camp with their stuff in trash bags or plastic bags with holes in them,” Tatelman says. “We knew that a lot of them were coming with everything they own for one week away and that they were living in foster care, transitional housing, being raised by another, so that was a very challenging sight to see.”
The Tatelmans started giving backpacks to the campers, many of whom would immediately transfer their belongings into the new bags and fill them with school…
