4 Years ago while at a restaurant that gave kids crayons to doodle while they waited for their food, Bryan Ware pondered the fate of those crayons after his kids were done with them. Bryan never expected a simple question about crayons would change his life, and the lives of children all over his home state of California.
Bryan and his team of volunteers at The Crayon Initiative take old crayons from just about anywhere they can get them, melt them down, and mold them into a new crayon. Since the new crayons are a bigger shape, they are easier for special needs children and kids in the hospitals to use them. Bryan’s story recently went viral on social media platforms, and Bryan and his team are busier than they have ever been. “I had no idea how social media would so deeply, positively impact our mission. It is so far beyond what I could have imagined or planned for, I am sincerely blown away,” he says.