SAVE THE CRAYONS!

Wright Elementary students collect discarded crayons to recycle
• By Madelyn Edwards [email protected]
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Wright Elementary fourth graders Callee Cangley and Haley Wolfsen are collecting broken crayons to recycle and give to children’s hospitals.
MADELYN EDWARDS / WD PHOTO

Initiative means cleaning up a mess or taking care of something even when a person isn’t responsible for doing so, according to two fourth graders at Wright Elementary School.
Callee Cangley and Haley Wolfsen took initiative by collecting broken crayons, which will be melted down and made into new crayons, at their school.
September’s monthly character trait was initiative, so a teacher showed a video of The Crayon Initiative in action as an example. The Crayon Initiative is an organization that makes new crayons out of broken ones, then sends them to be used by children in hospitals.
About two weeks ago, Cangley and Wolfsen started collecting crayons and now every grade level has access to a box to discard broken crayons. The girls are talking about expanding the project to every classroom, using empty tissue boxes to collect the broken crayons, they said.
“It feels really good to do this because we get to help children from children’s hospitals and it makes us feel happy because they’re happy, and we love when everybody’s happy because it’s just a good thing,” Wolfsen said.
Cangley agreed that they wanted to make other kids happy.
“It breaks our hearts when we see kids not happy,” she said.
With the help of school Counselor Lois Redden and their parents, Cangley and Wolfsen expanded their project to collect broken crayons at local restaurants like Chili’s, Olive Garden and the Funky Munky.
Redden said so far they have collected a paper box full of broken crayons. Their plan for now is to extend the project until the end of the school year and pick up boxes once a month.
The project shows that the Wright Elementary School community is willing to do something to benefit others and not necessarily benefit themselves, Redden said.
Redden said Cangley and Wolfsen are setting a good example for other kids, who may be recruited in the project later on to sort crayons.
“We really consider ourselves a family here at Wright, teachers and students,” Redden said. “I’ve never worked in a place where people cared so much about other people.”