Good morning on this drizzly Thursday.

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Gianna is, in many ways, like most other 11-year-olds.

She’s enjoying her final month off before classes resume, wrapping up her summer reading and gearing up for her next chapter: middle school.

But while some school-age children and their parents may be using this time to cross off long back-to-school shopping lists, Gianna has nearly all that she needs: a backpack, filled with supplies, that was free.

This is peak season for Operation Backpack, a community service of Volunteers of America that gives children in homeless or domestic violence shelters new backpacks loaded with grade-specific supplies. The group is collecting new backpacks in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and parts of New Jersey through the end of the workweek, and is expecting to receive about 9,000 full bags from the public. The bags are inspected, sorted through and then distributed to schoolchildren living in shelters.