Crayons for Cancer

(WTNH) - In the fall of 2008, our church, Wethersfield Evangelical Free Church, challenged families to start with a small sum of cash donated by our church, go forth and multiply it, and then donate it to someone or a group in need. We started with $50 but had no idea how to accomplish our mission. After a lot of praying for guidance, Shirley, the crossing guard at our school, gave our children a boxful of old crayons. We didn’t know it at the time, but those crayons later inspired Emily to come up with the idea to melt the crayons down into fun shapes and sell them in order to make money for kids with cancer in honor and memory of her friend TJ who died just before reaching his 4th birthday. So, with the $50 we purchased some cooking trays in different shapes (stars, hearts, etc), approached multiple restaurants about donating used crayons, and started our mission.

We found a few more locations to sell our Crayons for Cancer but by far and beyond our weekend sitting outside of Sams Club in Manchester CT was the biggest. While meeting hundreds of amazing people and raising over $750 we met a little girl that is a current cancer patient at CCMC. She told us "I'm kicking cancer in the butt." Warms your heart and served to further motivate us.

February 27th we made our first donation of $2,000.

Annual Benefit Concert - June 11th - Manchester BiCentenial Band Shell. This event is a giant crayon party with 4 hours of on-stage performances. We also have food vendors and a silent auction / raffle area.