Bringing Craft to Children in Need in San Diego

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.