After Los Gatos resident Kathy Bays retired from a long career as a special education instructor and school administrator, she had some time to clean out the closets full of her kids’ old stuff.
She ended up with two shoeboxes full of old crayons to get rid of.
Bays remembered seeing something on TV about a nonprofit that gives new life to the pre-loved coloring utensil; a quick Google search turned up the website for an organization called the Crayon Initiative out in the East Bay suburbs.
She shipped those first shoeboxes to the headquarters of the Danville nonprofit, which reformulates the waxy bits of refuse as brand new crayons and provides them to hospitals around the country free of charge.
And when the organization’s founder, Bryan Ware, got in touch to see if she’d be interested in being the South Bay’s “crayon ambassador,” she jumped at the chance.
Ware explains the 501(c)(3) sprung out of his early passion for art.
“I would rather do the hands-on thing,” he said. “School was not my thing. That’s not how my brain works.”
When he heard arts funding was being cut from education budgets across California, he tried to find out how he might be able to share his love of art with others.
“That was an unacceptable thing,” he said. “Because that’s what kept me in school.”
At that time, in 2011, his children were 5 and 7 years old, so he knew just how many crayon stubs get left behind.
“Most restaurants were handing out crayons to kids,” he said, adding he started to wonder, What could we do with these free resources that they’re throwing away?
The idea germinated in his head for the next couple years, and after some prodding from friends, he decided to take the leap and launch the organization.
In January 2014 he received tax-exempt status, which was retroactively effective to May 22, 2013. The Crayon Initiative was born.
Ware tapped into his background in packaging and supply chain management—and his wife’s experience as a school teacher—to establish the nonprofit.
He knew there could be challenges around how to target which schools were “needy” enough to receive donations, and he decided instead to target the healthcare field.
A friend who was working as a child life specialist at UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital in San Francisco said hospitalized kids could benefit from his idea.
“I dug in and started to learn more about that,” he said, noting they began distributing recycled crayons to UCSF shortly afterwards.
Ware had another friend who worked at toy-maker Mattel, which sponsors the children’s hospital at UCLA, located in the Westwood neighborhood of Los Angeles.
“Can you get me into that hospital?” he asked her.
She told him to come up with a solid plan. And two months later they were able to work out the details. Soon the Crayon Initiative began to distribute crayons at John Muir Health Pediatric Specialty Clinic in Walnut Creek.
The reason crayons are needed is because child life specialists—who focus on making a kid’s hospital journey feel as normal as possible—generally receive a stipend from the hospital, since they can’t bill health insurance companies for their services, according to Ware.
“They actually have to raise money in that department for supplies like crayons,” he said. “We don’t charge a penny to the hospital.”
Fast-forward to today and the organization is sending crayons to 250 children’s care facilities across the country.
The first three Los Gatos businesses Bays was able to convince to help wrangle crayons were Willow Street Wood-Fired Pizza, Double D’s Sports Grille and Campo Di Bocce.
“Then I reached out to the Wooden Horse toy store,” she said. “I asked them if they were willing to be a collection spot.”
The owner was enthusiastic about the idea, she says, adding the Los Gatos Library also offered to be a drop-off point.
“It’s a win-win situation,” she said. “Everybody feels good about recycling. It’s pretty easy for them.”
Next, she posted about the project on NextDoor and the “Buy Nothing Los Gatos” Facebook group. She also connected with the local elementary schools.
It was going gangbusters until Covid-19 hit and all the restaurants closed. But Bays says it’s picking up now.
About every three weeks, Bays does the rounds to gather used crayons from the boxes she’s set out.
Next she takes them to a post-secondary vocational program in Campbell, where the 18-22-year-old students help sort the crayons by color.
Then, she loads up her minivan and drives the haul up to Danville.
In the past, before the pandemic curtailed volunteer opportunities, she would even join other volunteers to help transform old crayons into new ones.
“We pour the melted wax into the mold, pop them out and put them into boxes—eight to a box,” she said. “The crayons stay out of the landfill; they get to hospitalized children.”
She’s even brought her neighbor, fellow Los Gatan Kathy Gazzarato, along to assist.
“I’ve taken her up a couple times,” she said. “We’ll probably do it again when Covid lets us in again.”
For Bays, it also provided a way to stay in touch with the Los Gatos education institutions and the Santa Clara County Office of Education, even in retirement.
“The students are happy to see me,” she said. “And I connect with the local schools, the principals, the parents.”
Her own daughter, Emily—whose crayons sparked this whole volunteer second-career—became a nurse and got a job in the emergency room at the Maine Medical Center in Portland, Maine.
One day a child life specialist arrived to help a young injured patient who was soon to undergo a procedure.
“She showed up with a box of Crayon Initiative crayons,” Bays said, describing how Emily came to realize the impact the Bay Area organization her mom helps has on hospitalized kids. “My daughter was like, ‘Oh my God!’
“It’s just such a positive thing.”
For information about the Crayon Initiative, or details about how to donate to the organization, visit thecrayoninitiative.org.
