Tut Kailech and Mitch Peppmuller have always had a deep passion for the community that helped raise them — and a strong desire to give back to their fellow Lincolnites in need.
Now, through their charitable organization Give4Good, they’re hoping to do just that.
On Sunday, Kailech and Peppmuller are hosting their latest back-to-school donation drive to collect school supplies for local schools from 7 p.m. to dark in the parking lot by Kiwanis Field at Woods Park.
The pair is looking to collect a variety of school supplies for middle and elementary school students, including backpacks, pencils, notebooks, crayons, rulers, scissors, hand sanitizer, tissues and glue sticks. They’ve also started a campaign for monetary donations. A full list of needed items can be found on the GoFundMe page. Donations will be delivered to Lincoln Public Schools on Aug. 9.
Kailech and Peppmuller formed Give4Good in late 2020 after Kailech, who worked at Randolph Elementary at the time, noticed a number of students who came to school each day without winter coats.
So the best friends of 15 years put their heads together and came up with the idea for their organization, which they’ve used as a vessel to help them give back to the community.
Through Give4Good, Kailech and Peppmuller have done a coat drive for local children, which is the event that started it all, and a back-to-school drive in 2021.
Then, their momentum seemed to halt and life felt like it got in the way, they said. Their jobs — Peppmuller is a broker-dealer specialist at Union Bank & Trust and Kailech is a community builder at NeighborWorks Lincoln — suddenly became too busy. Then, last year Kailech lost his brother.
The timing just never seemed right to host another event.
But this summer, everything finally lined up perfectly. So, Kailech and Peppmuller decided to put together another fundraiser to donate school supplies to local teachers and students at 10 elementary schools and four middle schools at LPS: Everett, McPhee, Clinton, Elliott, Hartley, Prescott, Randolph, Saratoga, Norwood Park, Brownell, Culler, Dawes, Park and Irving.
“We were just like, let's just put it in action and see what happens because regardless of how much money we raise, regardless of how much supplies that we're able to gather, it's still a win for the community,†Peppmuller said.
Having everything they need for class can have a big impact on a student’s self esteem, said Kailech, who moved to Lincoln as a refugee and remembers times when he didn’t have a notebook or the right school supplies.
But in recent years, he’s also seen a lot of teachers struggle to provide school supplies for their own classrooms — much of which teachers pay for with their own money.
Kailech hopes the Give4Good back-to-school drive will take some of that weight off of both students’ and teachers’ shoulders.
“It really takes a village to raise children. It shouldn't just be on the parents. It shouldn't just be on the educators. We can also give what we can,†Kailech said.
Kailech and Peppmuller aren’t sure what their next event will be. Maybe another coat drive, or a food drive. Someday, they hope to register the organization as an official nonprofit and make giving back to Lincoln a full-time job.
But for now, their focus is on doing what they can, when they can.
“We're just trying to do good for a place we care about,†Peppmuller said.