Island Children’s Foundation and Northwell Distribute 500 Backpacks at Second Annual Event

Prepared and ready for back to school.

Northwell Health employees and the New York Islanders teamed up to prepare 500 backpacks for children in need of educational assistance and distributed them to various local nonprofit organizations.

The blue backpacks, with the Isles logo and Northwell branding, were filled to the brim with notebooks, pencils, crayons, a folder and more.

“The backpacks are great and the items in them are pretty sturdy,” said Joe Interlandi, captain of the Northwell Health hockey team. “If I were a kid, I would love to have something that was this colorful and complete.”

Interlandi and his team, the Northwell Health Heroes, joined Islanders employees in volunteering to fill backpacks Wednesday. Northwell’s mission to impact the community is carried out by its employees who are passionate about giving back to a good cause.

“Giving back to the community is extremely important. Every year we do more and more community events,” Interlandi said. “We are very invested in our community outreach. Every year that goes by, we seem to have more and more opportunities to do outreach work with the community, and our players are there for that.”