Bellen's More Than Peach Project
Meet Bellen Woodard...an incredibly inspiring 4th grader and straight-A student from Virginia. Bellen is making it her mission to raise awareness of diversity and to increase inclusivity in the classroom through her More than Peach Project.
As the only African American student in her class at the time, Bellen Woodard created the "More than Peach Project" in 2019 after frequently hearing the peach-colored crayon referred to as the “skin-color” crayon. Her idea grew into a national movement to enhance classroom culture by providing diverse art supplies throughout local schools from donations her non-profit organization collects. Bellen created Palette Packets, art supply packets containing sketch books and boxes of regular and multicultural color crayons, for distribution to preschool students, elementary school classrooms, and middle school social studies and art classrooms in Loudoun County, Virginia.
From Bellen: "When I began my project in Spring 2019, I started by creating my Palette Packets using big-brand multicultural crayons to donate to students so that no student felt "disincluded". These had been around for almost 30 years and because they were much harder to find and pretty pricey, I saved my money...and began purchasing these items on my own with the goal of donating to 80,000 kids. I soon found that to continue my message, I needed to create my own to best represent my mission and spirit and allow me to reach more students. After lots of hard work and your support, I'm SO EXCITED to be able to offer my own More than Peach exclusive Palette Packets and the More than Peach brand multicultural crayons and sketchpads to share with kids everywhere--to further the empathy and curiosity of all kids. I hope you love them!"
We're thrilled we'll be carrying Bellen's products in our shop soon and hope you'll follow her on Instagram...and visit her website to see how you can help her make a difference. Bellen: your activism is inspiring, uplifting and we need more kiddos with a big heart like yours in the world! xo, m + k #beethechange
(Logo & photo courtesy of Bellen's More than Peach Project)