Crayons for Cancer

Caring and compassion are core values at the Middlesex YMCA. This week, Macdonough School Kids' Korner had the opportunity to exemplify these traits by supporting "Crayons for Cancer." (www.crayonsforcancer.org).

"Crayons for Cancer" seeks to ease the financial burdens of families whose children currently suffering from cancer by selling cute-shaped crayons. They take old crayon donations to melt down and create fun shape crayons that are sold or used to replenish hospital Treasure Chests.

At Kids' Korner, we noticed that the box of crayons on our art cart had been getting larger and larger and that many of those crayons were broken ones. Around the same time, we learned about "Crayons for Cancer 2nd Annual Benefit Concert" (June 12th, 2010) and decided it would be a perfect was to get involved.

The children started Tuesday afternoon by sorting out our "good" crayons from the "donation" crayons. They could not believe how many broken pieces were inside our crayon box. After they peeled away the paper from all the donation crayons, they were shocked to find that there were over 1,000 broken crayons to donate to this great cause.

The donation will be brought to to "Buried Under Comics" who will deliver our donation to the Crayons for Cancer Benefit Concert on June 12th in Manchester, CT from 11-3 pm.

To read about other ways Macdonough School Kids' Korner has supported families with cancer this school year, please visit the Macdonough School Blog at http://macdonoughschool.blogspot.com/2010/01/ribbon-project.html

The Ribbon Project at Kids' Korner

Students of the YMCA Kids’ Korner at Macdonough School had the opportunity to show caring and compassion by creating handmade pink ribbons for breast cancer patients in Connecticut.

The Ribbon Project is a community art project founded by Miss Porter’s School senior, Jenny Roach. Participants craft handmade pink ribbons using non-ribbon materials. These “ribbons” are then distributed by Jenny to breast cancer patients in local hospitals and cancer treatment centers. The Ribbon Project connects nicely to our YMCA positive value, CARING, which is also featured as #26 on the Search Institute’s List of 40 Developmental Assets.

Our Kids’ Korner program contacted Jenny Roach via The Ribbon Project website (http://www.theribbonproject.webs.com/) after the Hartford Courant had posted an article about her work. Jenny immediately sent our site a publicity packet, including posters, postcards and websites about the project. (You can find The Ribbon Project on Facebook!) We also placed a PINK DONATION BOX on site, looking for donations of fun pink materials for Jenny. She accepts a variety of materials, including fabric, ribbon, beads and fake flowers. Soon after, Jenny agreed to visit our site and speak to the children about creating and planning service-learning projects, including how she turned her inspiration into a reality.

On Friday, December 18th, Jenny brought along pink foam sheets that she had formed into ribbon shapes and bag full of decorative pink objects. Every Kids’ Korner student worked together to create several ribbons that Jenny was then able to take for distribution. To date, The Ribbon Project has created well-over 1000 “ribbons” for Connecticut breast cancer patients. Our program is glad to have contributed to this achievement.