About 700 kids walked away from downtown Bellevue at the beginning of this week with new backpacks stuffed with school supplies, courtesy of Ascend Hospitality Group and Amazon.

The Bellevue-headquartered restaurant group behind Ascend Prime Steak & Sushi hosted its sixth annual "AHG Has Your Back: Dream Big" event, turning a school-supply giveaway into a full carnival for students affiliated with five area nonprofits.

Kids played carnival games, got their faces painted, decorated their new gear, and grabbed a free lunch from Stanford's Food Truck.

Elaina Morris, co-founder and CEO of AHG and its philanthropic arm AHG Cares, said the carnival was built around making kids feel ready for the school year ahead.

"A backpack is more than just school supplies — it's a symbol of possibility," Morris said at the event.

Morris, a 2023 425 Magazine "Women to Watch" honoree, leads a female-led, independent restaurant management group that employs more than 500 people across Washington, Oregon, Utah, and Arizona.

She launched the backpack program in 2021, and AHG estimates it has distributed more than 4,000 backpacks over the six years since.

In a May 2022 profile on BellevueDowntown.com, Morris described AHG Cares as central to the company's culture, saying the program "continues to remind people who work here that there's a purpose to the work they do."

The July 27 event drew students connected to five area nonprofits, though the organizations were not publicly named. Amazon partnered with AHG on the effort, as it has in previous years, according to coverage by 425 Business and MyNorthwest.

With more than 4,000 backpacks distributed since 2021, the program has become one of downtown Bellevue's largest annual back-to-school efforts. School starts across the Bellevue School District in early September.