WORCESTER, Mass. - It won't be long before students are hopping on the bus and heading back to school for another year. To make sure they're prepared, a local nonprofit is stepping in to help.

508 Forever Young continued their annual tradition of hosting a backpack drive in Worcester Saturday afternoon.

The group and its founder Woodrow Adams, Jr. have been collecting and handing them out for just under a decade. All of the backpacks are filled up with other school supplies, like pencils, notebooks and crayons, before given out to children throughout Worcester County. 

"It's very successful," said volunteer Dayzyah Wintzel. "Every year, we get more and more people, and omre and more families to help. We're a big family around town. Some things bring us down, but we always come up in the end and make this stuff happen."

"The support that you look around and you see through the many different donors and the families and the community partners we have here in attendance is just amazing," Adams said. "It's overwhelming."

This year, Adams and his volunteers were expecting to hand out more than 1,000 backpacks.

"I'm pretty excited," said backpack recipient Henrique Tome. "Basically everyone here can get one for themselves."

"There's a lot of things I can use for the school year," said recipient Cahmya Brown. "It's very helpful for that."

"Everybody's out, the weather's nice, the sun's out, everybody's having fun. It's a good day," said backpack recipient Teddy Botwe.

508 Forever Young says donations came from all over, whether it be people or businesses.

This year's backpack handout was an hours-long festival, which also featured the food, games and the Worcester Public Library's mobile truck, "Libby."