Nashville, Tenn. - It was a great first day at school for over 150 children served by Youth Villages of Middle Tennessee. They were the recipients of new backpacks filled with school supplies, collected and donated by the sales associates and employees of Crye-Leike, Realtors in Middle Tennessee.

"Most of the children and adolescents in our care have had to move from place to place and have very little to call their own," said Patti Bryan, development director of Youth Villages in Middle Tennessee. "Backpacks for students now have become essential items which most children take for granted. In many ways, having new backpacks of their own on that all-important first day of school is a big boost for our Youth Villages' children."

Supporting Youth Villages is not new to Crye-Leike. In addition to Crye-Leike's 19 branch offices in Middle Tennessee sponsoring this back-to-school project over the past three years, Crye-Leike also has held a fund-raiser called Campaign for Children for the past 22 years, said company officials. Campaign for Children is a fund-raiser where greeting cards, designed by Youth Villages' children, are sold to Crye-Leike sales associates and employees in bulk. All proceeds raised are designated to the Chris Crye Memorial Fund and are used to purchase holiday gifts for the children at Youth Villages and to support their mentoring programs. To date, Crye-Leike has raised in excess of $320,280 for Youth Villages.

Youth Villages (www.youthvillages.org) offers help and hope to more than 3,000 troubled children and their families each year (over 1,500 in Nashville and Middle Tennessee) through a continuum of care that ensures treatment in the most effective, least restrictive environment. Services include: home-based counseling, therapeutic foster care and adoption services, residential treatment, community-based programs and transitional living services. Additionally, Youth Villages specializes in crisis services and responded to over 2,500 crisis calls from families in crisis across the state this past year.

Today, more than 1,100 counselors, teachers and skilled support staff provide Youth Villages' services from offices in 33 locations throughout Tennessee, Mississippi, Arkansas, Alabama and Texas. Youth Villages has five offices in Middle Tennessee: Nashville, Clarksville, Columbia, Cookeville and Dixson

Crye-Leike (www.crye-leike.com), a full service real estate company for 27 years, is the nation's 10th largest real estate company and the largest serving Tennessee and the Mid-South. It has a network of over 3,000 sales associates and 75 branch and franchise offices located in 39 counties throughout a six-state southern region in Tennessee, Arkansas, Mississippi, Georgia, Kentucky and Florida. Sales associates in the Greater Nashville area currently total over 900.

To learn more about how to organize a Youth Villages' fund-raiser in your office, contact Patti Bryan at 615/250-7207.