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Founder and CEO Lynn Margherio saw the opportunity for Cradles to Crayons while visiting her family over the holidays in 2002.  She noticed her nieces’ and nephews’ toys and clothes piled high in the playroom and closets at her brother’s house; they were in perfectly good condition, but were no longer being used.  From these and similar experiences, C2C was shaped by a vision that existing community resources could be leveraged to benefit economically disadvantaged children.  We recognize and act upon a very simple reality: children quickly outgrow clothing, books and other items, often before they appear worn or used.  C2C’s unique business model provides an avenue through which children’s products in good and working condition can be recycled in a socially and environmentally responsible way.

Everyday Essentials, Cradles to Crayons’ signature program, provides in-need children with the basic items they need such as clothing, footwear, books, toys, school supplies, and baby safety equipment.  While Everyday Essentials operates year round, we divide the year into seasonal initiatives:

·         Spring Greening – Our Spring Greening initiative encourages families to clean out their closets during the traditional spring cleaning months of March and April and to donate their gently-used items to Cradles to Crayons.

·         Gear Up for Baby – This program focuses on infant and child safety throughout May and June.

·         Ready for School – Ready for School provides children with the materials they need to feel  ready to learn from head to toe, including a special emphasis on providing thousands of new backpacks with necessary school supplies.

·         Gear Up for Winter – C2C’s wintertime initiative endeavors to provide kids with the cold weather gear, including winter coats, boots, hats, and gloves, that they need to stay warm.

Our mission is to equip homeless and in-need children with the basic essentials they need to feel safe, warm, ready to learn, and valued. While meeting the immediate needs of low-income children, we also aim to set a foundation for lasting change by providing meaningful, tangible volunteer opportunities to thousands of individuals and hundreds of organizations each year. 

Cradles to Crayons’ 2011 goals for Everyday Essentials include mobilizing more than 20,000 volunteers and holding 750 children’s product collection drives in order to distribute 55,000 packages of essential items to disadvantaged children throughout Massachusetts. Unfortunately, there are hundreds of thousands of children that we are not yet reaching. There are more than 305,000 Massachusetts children in our target age range living in homeless and low-income situations, a number that is steadily rising in this economic climate.  In September 2010, the U.S. Census Bureau reported that “The number of people in poverty in 2009 (43.6 million) is the largest number in the 51 years for which poverty estimates have been published.”  Sadly, the report also stated that although children comprise just under a quarter of the total population, they represent 35.5% of people in poverty.  Families living in poverty often stretch their budgets just to pay for rent, heat, and groceries; in these situations, buying a winter coat, new shoes, or educational toys or books for their children is simply not an option.

Cradles to Crayons fills a unique niche within the non-profit sector. We collaborate with a network of more than 300 social service agencies such as Horizons for Homeless Children, the MSPCC, Bay Cove Human Services, and local Boys & Girls Clubs to identify and reach the children who need our help the most.  Through our online ordering system our registered partners can place orders for KidPacks based on a child’s size, age, gender, interests, and unique situation.  Our volunteers work to fill these orders, which are then picked up by the requesting partners and brought directly to the children and their families.

This collaborative model allows C2C to ensure that the children we serve are those most in need in an efficient and effective manner. C2C enables our social service partners to build stronger relationships with the families they serve while focusing their time on their own service delivery rather than spending time seeking basic items for their clients. In a 2010 survey of our distribution partner network, more than 77% of C2C’s partners said that receiving goods from C2C is critical to developing strong client relationships and/or introducing clients to programs. In this way, not only are we meeting the needs of local children, but we are also improving service delivery across the social service sector.

One social serve partner tells us of a family they serve: “Lily’s mother cried when she saw the beautiful and warm winter jacket that was in her pack.  She told me that Lily only had a ripped coat for the year and there was no money for a new one. Lily draws so much attention to herself with her behaviors (she is autistic) and she always worried that people would think she wasn't taking care of her child because of the way Lily was dressed.  This coat and clothing made all the difference to this struggling family.  It was one less thing to worry about.” Lily’s mother was able to connect with one of our social service agency partners, who placed an order for the basic things that her family needed.

C2C relies on the collection of children’s products, and many of our most successful collection drives are organized by teenagers and young people.  The majority of our products are new and gently used items donated by families and individuals. In communities across the state, there is an abundance of like-new clothing, books, toys, and other essentials that can have a tremendous impact on the life of an underprivileged child. Youth can help to facilitate community-based product drives in schools, temples, and even across an entire town. These drives provide an opportunity for families and communities of all sizes to come together to share their time and treasures. Collection drives can take a variety of forms or themes and serve as an easy but tangible way to give locally.