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Marking 10 years of helping kids and the environment, The Crayon Initiative is holding its third annual Melt With You Festival next month for a full day with live music, comedy, socialization, and unlimited food and drinks while raising funds and awareness for its cause.
Melt With You (MWY) is the Tri-Valley nonprofit's largest fundraising event, with music acts such as Salvage Title, Steve Hanson, School of Rock San Ramon, The 360's and Fleetwood Mask set to perform. Entertainment is an aspect accompanied with their message to encourage people to support their organization and celebrate its milestone anniversary reached earlier in 2023.
"The MWY23 Festival is an all-day event, and will bring folks from all over the county together to hear great music, enjoy great food and drinks and have a good time, and hear more about our organization," Jonathan Ziegler, executive director of the Crayon Initiative, told the Weekly.
"We will have various presentations during the event, which in turn provides more funds to ship more packages of crayons to the hospitals all over the United States. The festival will help publicize The Crayon Initiatives' need to get back to pre-pandemic shipping capabilities," he added.
Based in Danville, The Crayon Initiative helps children in hospitals obtain crayons to color and find joy. The nonprofit's goal is to bring happiness to children facing the stress of hospitalization through the process of transforming recycled crayons; collecting, sorting, melting and molding them into new ones they can enjoy and gain freedom through creative play.
Bryan Ware founded the organization when thinking about how to solve the issue of crayons getting used by kids one time in a restaurant and then being thrown away. Since then, the foundation has seen local people anxious to support its cause.
"The community benefits by keeping thousands of crayons out of local landfills, providing a vehicle for The Crayon Initiative to repurpose these used crayons. Also, volunteers benefit by having a place and regular location to spend their time," Ware said. "Our volunteers have come back, and we have many who have been involved for five, six, seven or more years, so that is all terrific."
Since The Crayon Initiative was incorporated as a nonprofit on May 22, 2013, it has created 5.7 million new recycled crayons by rescuing 53.6 million crayons from landfills, providing more than 250 hospitals with over 713,000 crayon packs as of May 2023.
Last year, the initiative raised $75,106 at its festival, with hopes of raising $100,000 this year. With a goal of shipping 1 million crayon packs per year, every $1.46 worth of donation provides one box of recycled crayons for a child patient, according to the nonprofit. Funds go toward shipping the crayons and creating more efficient ovens and capabilities to produce them.
"We need money and volunteer support to keep growing. It's that simple. Give 99 cents, do a fundraiser with us, or your company. Sorting events are a wonderful fundraiser," Ziegler said. "The majority of our techniques and events are based on getting our 'message' out to more people who are able to donate funds."
"We would like to expand our programs, hiring art therapists and psychologists to help create additional programs with Child Life Services programs at these hospitals," Ziegler added. "We expect that we will need to create new programs, perhaps a kick-ball-a-thon or something like that for the kids to get involved too."
Other annual events hosted by The Crayon Initiative include the Crayon Classic Golf Tournament and the Sumner Lovin' Memorial Bike Ride. Offering fun activities with large fundraising opportunities allowed the nonprofit to bounce back after losing 70% of its revenue from corporations through sponsorships and team-building events amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
"We had to close our doors (during COVID) to volunteers being in the facility melting the crayons and we had to readjust our timing for shipping … It wasn't easy, but we kept our digital presence alive and added to the downloadable coloring projects we offered," Ziegler said. "We still received crayons, and since our process involves a lot of heat (melting the crayons) we were able to handle them in a similar way as pre-COVID,"
Team members of The Crayon Initiative have appreciated the opportunity to embark on this journey. For Ziegler, he and other members have rediscovered the unique smell of crayons bringing back great memories of their childhood and want to pass that joy on to children today. They've learned that the East Bay community is resilient and willing to get out the message of the organization's mission and they're looking forward to the success yet to come.
"It's been a great time over the last 10 years. The next 10 will be incredible too," Ziegler said. "We have to say thank you to everyone who has been a part of the effort. Friends, family, volunteers who have become friends, those who just came in for the first time this past month, as well as those who have been involved since day one."
The Melt With You Festival will be held on Aug. 12 at Madrid Ranch (at 57 Spring Lane in Danville) with doors opening at noon. Parking tickets are required for those driving to the venue. For tickets, donations and more information, visit give.thecrayoninitiative.org.
