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By JOYANNA LOVE/ Senior Staff Writer

What started as a school supply giveaway has grown into a multi-day event for youth at The Well, a church on Hopewell Drive in Clanton.

Pastor Larry Sailes said the school supply giveaway has been an annual event for at least eight years.

“We have done it annually, but not at this magnitude before,” Sailes said. “We are going to continue to do it at this level.”

This year’s event included two special services and a Fun Day on July 27, featuring rapper Pastor Ibrahim Kareem Lee of Nu Genre in Montgomery.

Sailes said he enjoyed “the fun that we had with the kids and letting them know that they can have clean fun and enjoy each other.”

He said people of all ages got in on the fun for a water fight with water balloons and water guns.

“Everyone from our seniors to our little babies was involved,” Sailes said. “That was exciting. It was just good clean fun.”

A DJ provided music throughout the event.

“It was just a good time for everybody,” Sailes said.

Close to 100 students received needed school supplies during the event.

“That is the main idea behind it is to ensure that our kids when they get ready to go to school on Aug. 6 that the community kids — no matter what color they are, whoever they are — have the school supplies needed,” Sailes said. “We don’t want our kids to have to worry about things like that and if the parents are not able to provide that is one of the things that the church does.”

The final event for the youth-focused weekend was young Minister Braylon Roberts speaking in the Sunday morning service.