Imagine having a family of more than 100 people, Pastor Les Bailey told 24 third-graders from North Albany Elementary School.

“I’ve got a family of 130-some!” Bailey, the executive director for Helping Hands homeless shelter, said Friday to the students from Susan Kuebrich’s class. “If everybody showed up, we’d have about 140. That’s a lot of people to take care of. And it takes a lot of things.”

The class helped gather many of those things with an 11-day, schoolwide drive.

The students collected nearly 800 items, including 161 razors, 127 toothbrushes, 87 bars of soap and 13 boxes of laundry detergent. They also raised $126.71 in cash.

Bailey, his wife, Joyce, and building manager Eric Stalford came to the school Friday to collect the donations and answer questions about Helping Hands.

“You guys are helping out,” Pastor Bailey told the group. “You get 100 people together, it’s nice for them to bathe and shave.”

Students were full of questions: Had Bailey ever had to turn anyone away? Did anyone ever fight there? How did it get started?

Bailey said the shelter, now at 619 Ninth Ave. S.E., opened officially in 1985, at another site. Even before that, he said, part of his ministry involved driving around town in a Volkswagen and handing out food, clothing and blankets to anyone in need.

Not everyone who uses the shelter actually stays there, Bailey told the children. To make room for the ones who do, he and the city of Albany have reached an agreement allowing people to sleep in shifts to comply with fire safety occupancy codes.

As for fights, Bailey acknowledged they have happened. People at the shelter must agree to behave themselves or they can’t stay, he added.

Many homeless “are sad people,” he said. “But we’re there to love them and help them. I tell them all the time, ‘God doesn’t make junk. He loves everybody.’”

Helping Hands has been a service project for North Albany Elementary School for several years, said Kuebrich, the teacher. The annual donation drive is part of the school district’s emphasis on character education.

“Some people don’t have things that we have, and that makes them sad,” third-grader Annabel Medina explained.

Said classmate Anna Foster: “We really like helping the homeless shelter. They’re just like us, but without a home.”