We got a call from Sakura of America (headquartered in San Francisco) that they had a huge warehouse full of Color Products “out East" that they’d like to donate entirely to Fresh Artists. It consisted of more than 170,000 of their high quality artists tools and paints such as coloring brushes, watercolor paint, every size Pigma, Micron and GellyRoll pens, CrayPas Junior, Specialist, and Sakura Calligrapher sets. Many of these art materials were invented by Sakura for the professional artists and K-12 schools.
Sakura is one of Fresh Artists very first and steadiest sponsors, donating thousands of drawing, painting and illustration tools for special projects Fresh Artists developed. They were the sponsor of our first children’s storybook, "Pablo, the Philly Philanthropist", the story of a little boy who donated his artwork to be part of the Fresh Artists Collection and became a philanthropist. They printed hundreds of thousands of this little book that explains the unusual mission and method of inviting young children to play a catalytic role in saving art making in very poor public schools.
This time the gift they bestowed was professional drawing and illustration equipment, top quality, long useful and expensive. The total retail value of the pens, archival markers, solid paint, pencils, fine watercolor sets, high quality crafting tools, calligraphy sets and their world famous Cray Pas oil pastel sets is over $730,000 MSRP!
Our team has worked for more than 4 months to unpack and re-organize the entire donation of more than 170,000 products into sturdy shipping boxes filled to the brim with an assortment of all the Sakura art making products! We invited several thousands of qualified* art teachers in severely underfunded K-12 public schools throughout America to apply to receive one of these huge Fresh Artists Sakura Surprise Supplies Send-Outs! We now have a list, the boxes are packed and addressed.
Each hefty shipping box holds drawing and painting supplies with the aggregate MSRP value of over $1,000. That's enough high-quality drawing, painting, sketching or oil pastel sets for their classroom for more than a years worth of lessons.
As a person who gets a kick out of Fresh Artists' moxie and passion, we invite YOU to be part of the fun in this dazzling surprise!
After reorganizing, purchasing shipping materials and packing the 170,000 tools over the past 5 months, we could use help with the last few steps…underwriting the shipping cost of one or more of these heavy boxes out to the 240 Art teachers! They meet the poverty index, told us about their children, applied and (fingers and toes crossed)….are hoping they’ve won the prize!
