After losing her nonprofit job due to the pandemic, Adriana Sagrera volunteered to help out at a local Real Food for Kids distribution site. She knew food wasn’t the only thing area kids needed.
She posted a request for arts and crafts supplies on Facebook and received a flood of donations. She then sorted and grouped the materials—everything from colored pencils and buttons to construction paper—into activity packs that could be handed out to students in tandem with free meals, averaging about 175 packs a week throughout the summer.
In September, she had another idea. “I was trying to figure out what to do with bags and bags of old, broken crayons, and I thought, Why not make them into something fun!”
She started melting the crayon nubs down and resurrecting the wax into new shapes, first with Lego molds, then branching out with holiday-themed molds, like skulls for Halloween. Her activity bags have been distributed to students from three Arlington elementary schools—Claremont, Randolph and Drew.