Maria Fletcher:
I read a newspaper article about asbestos in crayons, and I was so horrified, I thought, how hard can it be to make a crayon? So I thought I would try. And all of a sudden it just grew.
Maria Porto:
Maria would call out over the fence and say, I need some help. Can you come and help.
Maria Fletcher:
And she’d climb over the fence and we'd make some crayons.
Maria Porto:
That's how we became business partners.
Maria Fletcher:
Yeah. So over 6 years, we've grown from the kitchen at the beginning to the workshop now, and we've got 4 young people who we have engaged to work on the Kinder Kits project.
Maria Porto:
We specifically don't do a stick crayon. We want to do something that's fun and sparks the child's imagination.
Maria Fletcher:
For the Kinder Kit, we chose a petal design because it helps the children to develop finger grip, and then they can actually learn to hand write with it, and they don't realise that they're preparing themselves for writing while they play.
We use beeswax because it's a sustainable product and safe for our kids to use.
Maria Porto:
We source all our ingredients from local Victorian businesses, and we're now working with OCC to package the crayon boxes for the Kinder Kits.
They're a really great organisation giving employment to people with disabilities.
Maria Fletcher:
And it's so lovely because every time we take the crayons there, they're so excited and so it's a really wonderful partnership. The most important part for us is being able to grow it in a way that allows us to support other Victorian businesses, to support young people, and we've been able to prove that we can do it in this project, which has been fabulous.
[End of transcript]
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