I started Rainbow Pack when I was 10 years old. My school took a field trip to Haddon Avenue Elementary School in Pacoima. We were partnered up with some of the students and as I was coloring a picture with my partner with one of the few crayons on the table, I heard one of the girls say that she wanted a box of skinny crayons but her mom said she could not afford them. This broke my heart and it made me want to make a change. I then contacted the social worker at Haddon. After speaking with her I learned that this problem could not be fixed with just box of crayons. All of the kids at Haddon live below the poverty level. Not only did the kids not have crayons but they did not have a lot of the other basic school supplies that my friends and I take for granted every day. Because of that, many of the kids could not do their homework and were falling behind. This made me even more determined to help.
Once I came up with the idea to give the kids brand-new backpacks full of homework supplies it was time to recruit some friends to help. The first year I got 4 of my friends to help and their parents. We set a goal to give backpacks and homework supplies to the entire kindergarten class at Haddon, but we doubled our goal and gave kindergarten and first grade backpacks and school supplies. The next year we set our goal even higher, we wanted to give Rainbow Packs (that is our name for the backpacks full of the supplies) to the entire school (K-5th grade). But we surpassed our goal again and helped the pre-kindergarten and special education classes too. To date Rainbow Pack has given out over 1,400 backpacks and over 19,000 school supplies. This being our third year we have set our biggest goal yet, we are hoping to help two entire schools, providing over 2,000 backpacks, and we are already more then half-way there. We have received so much help from our friends, family and even complete strangers but in order to reach our goal we need your help.