Bringing Craft to Children in Need in San Diego

Hello and Thank you for Supporting Bringing Craft to Children in Need in San Diego.

We have some exciting news just in time for Spring. We've been working a lot going into classrooms at the local schools, and recently donated 50 Sunset Craft Kits to children in First Grade at Barnard Elementary. 

We also received a very generous grant that allowed us to buy a CNC router, which gives the ability to design and prepare more craft kits and require less human time in the woodshop. One of our volunteers recently calculated how long it took him to prepare the kits for the 50 children at Barnard Elementary, and it was very suprising to see how labor-intensive that particular project is. We love the Sunset Craft Kit, so we'll keep making it, but we're working to get smarter and more efficient about it. We definitely don't want to burn our volunteers out! 

The new CNC router allows us to design on the computer and then tell a woodworking tool how to cut certain parts, including drilling holes for the project. There will still be a lot of handwork that goes into each craft kit, but the goal is to save some time and automate some of the kit's components. We've recently hired a new staff person with CNC experience to help us realize this new and exciting goal!

Happy fall, friends and supporters!

We have some really exciting news. We've received a generous grant from a private foundation that is going to allow us to buy a piece of equipment that will enable us to ramp up our Craft Kit production! We're getting a CNC machine, which allows for repeatable patterns and designs to be cut out --mostly in wood. 

Up until now, we've been cutting everything by hand, which is rewarding, but incredibly time consuming. We'll continue to do some things (many things) by hand, but having the CNC will allow us to really be able to produce a lot more craft kits. This month we had a group of office mates purchase String Art Craft Kits. They ordered them to craft together as a group because they liked the idea that for each kit sold, 1 gets donated to a child in need. So, this holiday season, we'll be giving several String Art Craft Kits to children in need. We hope to get more orders like this! And with the new CNC machine, we should be able to deliver to larger groups.

We have a new Volunteer Coordinator, Erin, who has been doing a wonderful job of organizing our volunteer base. He's a volunteer himself, and it's working out wonderfully to have him in charge of all volunteer communications. We recently had 3 volunteers come in and prep Sunset Craft Kits for an entire classroom at a local elementary school. The Sunset Craft Kit uses 100% scrap wood pieces. The interesting part is, that when our founder, Steffi, originally designed this kit, she thought that by using scraps, it would be a quick kit to put together. However, the scraps have to be cut into little houses, buildings, suns, sun rays, and small pieces for the sky. So preparing enough kits for one classroom takes about 12 hours of man power. We hope to be able to cut some of the parts out on the CNC when we get it up and running in order to cut down on some of the labor time. However, it's really important (and part of our mission) to stay true to being sustainable and using scrap pieces for the Sunset Craft Kit. So the plan is to still work smart, and to add in the shapes to areas that would be cut-offs from other CNC projects. Hopefully we'll have good news to report on this in our next report. 

If you'd like to order Craft Kits, you may do so from our website at sandiegocraft.org or you can continue to support us by making a donation here through GlobalGiving. 

Thank you so much for your support!

Kind regards, 

The Craft Collective Team

Links:

• More information about Craft Kits can be found here.