On Saturday, February 8th, Dedham Country Day School hosted a special day of service to benefit children in the greater Boston area served by the Cradles to Crayons organization (C2C). C2C’s mission is to provide children from birth through age 12, living in homeless or low-income situations, with the essential items they need to thrive at home, at school, and at play.
Over 100 volunteers including DCD staff members, current families, and alumni worked together for a well-orchestrated morning of sorting, inspecting and organizing all the gently used clothes, shoes, books and toys that were collected during the school’s month-long drive. All the goods are then transferred back to the Cradles to Crayons facility where everything will be prepared and packaged for distribution to the children.
Carrying big purple sacks full of donations, volunteers transferred all the donations into the Rand Gym from the storage container to all the different sorting stations that were set up around the room. With their station assignments and armed with toothbrushes, spray bottles, and paper towels, volunteers cleaned the soles of shoes, wiped down toys, and inspected clothing and books to make sure every item was in good condition and worthy of distribution to a child in need. One of the most challenging jobs is to make sure that the toys donated have all the requisite pieces. Every year, you can find our head of school, Allison Webster, on the floor surrounded by a posse of children counting puzzle pieces and game parts. This is her favorite station!
Keeping a running tally of bags, the final count at the end of the event was the following:
- 64 bags of Clothing
- 6 bags of Shoes
- 14 bags of Toys
- 11 large boxes of books
- 1 bag of Nursery items
- 1 bag of school and art supplies.
It’s always amazing to hear how Cradles to Crayons is able to quantify DCD’s impact. This year they reported that our collection drive and sorting morning will serve 1007 children in the greater Boston-area.
