By Currents News
Good Shepherd Catholic Academy in Marine Park is showing its true colors with a new service project called The Crayon Initiative. The school’s grandparents club collects broken and unused crayons from each grade, which will then be sent off to a company that repurposes them by melting them down into large three sided crayons.
The crayon initiative saves the pieces from ending up in landfills and distributes them for free to children’s hospitals in all 50 states. When used in healthcare settings, the new crayons won’t roll off hospital trays.
Diane Reynolds, the founder of the grandparents club at Good Shepherd, says students were eager to think outside the box on how they could help.
She tells Currents News that while the main aim of the initiative is “to learn about the environment and repurposing things,” more importantly it’s “about caring for others who may be less fortunate than yourselves.”
“We’re helping kids in the hospital learning to color, and then they won’t roll off the desk,” explain students Aylssa and Juliet Biscione, “and it’s going to make them happy.”
So far Good Shepherd has collected more than 20 pounds of crayons.