Ursuline Academy students host supply drive for ‘Crayons to Computers’

CINCINNATI (WXIX) - As the school year continues this fall, some Tri-State teens are working to make sure classrooms stay equipped with necessary school supplies this year.

A massive school supplies drive was held at Ursuline Academy on Tuesday, and the students’ work paid off as they handed out boxes of donations.

According to organizers, more than 6,100 individual items were donated and are now headed to Crayons to Computers, a non-profit that helps schools in need.

Once supplies are distributed among schools, Tri-State educations will be able to shop for free at their Teacher Resource Center.

“We thrive on donations from the community, whether in-kind donations like this or financial donations, or the work of volunteers, and this represents a little bit of both so we’re really thrilled,” said Amy Cheney, the president and CEO of Crayons to Computers.

Cheney says this is the largest donation they have seen this year and the most ever from an individual school.

All of the items were collected during Ursuline’s “Push 4 Pencils” drive, which was the brainchild of students Clare Dallas and Justine Starke.

“We thought it would be really fun to shop for school supplies because it was something we both enjoyed and there are a lot of students in our community that just don’t have the supplies that they need, so it was going to be a true need that we were going to be able to meet in our community,” Starke said.

Over the last several months, the two students worked to organize the effort and say they hope the donations, totaling more than $10,000, will help level the playing field for schools.

They are also hoping other students are inspired to get involved too.

“We’d love it if more people were able to support crayons to computers, but I think they’re really proud of how well this went,” Dallas said. “I think it surpassed both of our expectations of how we thought it was going to go... so it was awesome that everyone was so willing to help.”

Crayons to Computers is always accepting donations.

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