Crayons for a Cause: A Colorful Mission with Heart & Purpose

Four girls from Girl Scout Troop 1922 are gathering something ordinary in order to make an extraordinary impact.

They’re collecting crayons — old, used, broken crayons — to benefit kids in hospitals and our environment. And they’re earning the Girl Scout Bronze Award for their effort. 

Dori Ray, 11, and her teammates Adalyn, Mabel, and Inara, will remove the paper from all the crayons they collect, sort them by color, and ship them off to the Crayon Initiative. 

“They melt them down into triangle shapes,” Dori explained. “So kids in hospitals can still color. The triangle shapes are better because regular circle ones can roll onto the floor.”

If you want to donate, there’s collection boxes in the Flower Mound Library’s main entrance and the Lake Dallas Library’s children’s section. The girls’ final collection will be September 5, the Friday after Labor Day. 

Dori and her mom Stephanie got the idea from a big banner they saw in Staples one day. The Crayon Initiative recycles old crayons into about a million packs of new triangle crayons a year and they send free crayons to over 240 children’s hospitals. 

“We are also preventing the crayons from going into a landfill because they don’t ever disintegrate,” Dori said. “Crayons are petroleum products that don’t ever break down.” 

The Bronze Award is one of the highest awards in Girl Scouting and can only be earned by Girl Scout Juniors (4th and 5th grade). Dori, Adalyn, Mabel, and Inara will be completing their project and submitting the paperwork prior to bridging to Cadettes in September and starting their membership year in October. 

Cadettes can earn the Silver Award, and Seniors and Ambassadors work toward the Gold Award. The Bronze has several criteria, including more than 20 hours spent on a project that makes a difference in their communities. 

According to Stephanie, working on this project has helped Dori get out of her shyness. “She’s approaching people, like asking the library about the collection box. She’s also talked to some people who couldn’t come up to the library and helped do some porch pickups.

“She also learned goal setting and laid out a calendar and decided when she would need to do things. And she’s had to be flexible,” Stephanie said, adding that it’s been a fun summer project. 

“It’s great seeing the girls motivating each other. They’ve already planned a crayon sorting party.” 

In the future, Dori hopes to make the crayon collection an annual event and eventually get some younger Girl Scout troops to take it over. She’ll work to educate them about the project. 

Dori is starting 6th grade at Lamar Middle School, and her favorite subject is math.