By Linda Braden
Emerging Leaders made a difference in over 600 children’s lives while volunteering at Cradles to Crayons on Tuesday, October 27th. Cradles to Crayons provides children living in low-income or homeless situations basic and not so basic things they need to have a decent childhood. This ranges from clothes to hygiene products to books to school and art supplies to toys. They match up individualized children’s needs with the items they have received from various donations in their warehouse and create “kid packs” for each child in need. While they are not able to meet the demand of over 300,000 children in need across the state, they are able to make a difference for around 87,000 children. The night we volunteered, we were stationed at the coats section of the warehouse where we took large bags of coats that had been pre-sorted from all the other donations the organization receives and sorted them even further into sizes for girls and boys. We sorted over 600 coats, making those coats available to be put into kid packs and sent out to children in need. It felt good to not only know that we were helping a worthy cause, but it was especially rewarding to know that our impact would spread to hundreds of children in time for the cold winter months ahead. If you’d like to get involved, Cradles to Crayons accepts donations in the forms of children’s goods and funds and has a smoothly-run volunteer program.
