An odd-shaped plastic tray used to package an unknown product. Some loose colored bottle caps.
Trash?
To the average person, yes. But to Mary Simon, put them all together and you get a math game.
Simon is a teacher through and through, having taught math for many years. But she traded a classroom full of children for a warehouse full of odds and ends, doodads, doohickies and knick-knacks. In the exchange she wound up helping more than 450,000 young people throughout the region.
Simon is the founder of the Resource Area for Teachers, or RAFT, located in a Sunnyvale warehouse. Four years ago she got the idea that all the cast-offs, returns, overruns and surplus materials that Silicon Valley companies have trouble getting rid of could become a major boon to local teachers, and ultimately, children.
Simon previously worked for the Children's Discovery Museum in San Jose, where she put together a hands-on exhibit called the Doodad Dump. Kids took all sorts of things like computer disk pieces and funny-shaped plastic items, and created math, science and art projects. They loved it. Teachers asked Simon how they could get their hands on all the doodads.
Simon knew she was onto something. "I knew having been a teacher what the need was," she said. "Teachers need the support."
Simon understood that teachers had almost no money in their budgets, and often used funds from their own pockets to buy classroom materials. While Simon knew what teachers wanted and needed, she had never before run a business or a non-profit organization. She turned to the Non-profit Development Center and others to help realize her dream.
"The scariest thing was signing a lease on a building when we hadn't ever done this before," Simon said. "No one else had done it before."
Four years later, RAFT is a model being copied in other parts of the nation. Nearly 4,000 teachers and non-profit agencies are members of RAFT at a cost of $35 a year, with some teachers driving from as far away as the Central Valley on a regular basis. Approximately 2,100 volunteers from all over the Bay Area help RAFT each year. Volunteers include teachers, high-school students, senior-citizen groups and disabled adult groups, among others.
More than 1,000 businesses support RAFT with donated materials and funding.
Besides helping teachers, students and companies, RAFT officials estimate that the materials they have accepted from companies could fill trash cans lined up from South San Jose to Burlingame, growing by three miles each month.
Last summer RAFT expanded after merging with another non-profit agency, Resource Connections. The result is a new RAFT program called Computers to Classrooms.
Thanks to a $50,000 program investment by Applied Materials, one of RAFT's Sunnyvale neighbors, the agency is providing reconditioned computers to schools for an average of $35 each.
Simon said Applied's donation enabled RAFT to hire more employees to administer the program. The employees and a small army of volunteers take computers donated by local businesses and test, repair, erase files and generally clean them up. The nominal fee helps cover the cost of renewing the computers.
Photograph by Brian Prince
Fran Holland shows John Dunnon how to construct a musical instrument from PVC pipe, a balloon, straw and a rubber band during a Saturday workshop at RAFT.
Local Resource Occupational Programs at schools are now talking to RAFT about letting students who need experience in testing computers come and do the work.
"We need the labor to do the testing, so it was a match," Simon said.
In addition to the $50,000, Applied has donated its own used computers.
"It's a broader partnership than strictly sending just dollars; it's a plus for us," said Nancy Handel, vice president in charge of Worldwide Community and University Affairs at Applied. "We're proud to be a part of [RAFT]."
Stacks and stacks of computers are awaiting the reconditioning process, and will soon be on shelves for teachers to take away on Saturday mornings, when the warehouse is open to members.
"The teachers are grabbing up the computers," Simon said.
On Saturdays from 9:30 a.m. to 1 p.m., the warehouse becomes a festival of sorts, with 300 to 350 teachers and other members streaming through the doors to see what new items came into RAFT during the week.
The regulars greet each other and excitedly share their teaching success stories using RAFT materials. Some teachers even bring in projects children made for display.
For Simon, one of the greatest rewards of the job is to have enthusiastic teachers come back and tell her how the materials they purchased and the information they learned immediately helped students.
"On Monday morning there's an immediate difference in the classroom," Simon said.
To help teachers find creative ways to use the materials, volunteers--usually local high-school students from service clubs--staff demonstration tables on Saturdays, showing teachers how they can turn the odds and ends into science experiments, math games, or art projects.
Last weekend a strong model building made out of folded business cards was on display, just in time this week for teachers taking advantage of National Engineering Week.
"Our job is to look at what's coming in [from companies] and try to connect it to the teachers' curriculum," Simon said.
RAFT also offers low-cost classes on things like how to make kaleidoscopes, pin-hole cameras, recycled paper and musical instruments, among other things, using the castoffs. Teachers can even receive college credit for attending the classes. The class program is run by Gloriane Hirata, who also works as the science coordinator for seven local school districts for the National Science Foundation. Class instructors include regionally known scientists and artists.
There's also a room with paper cutters, shape cutters, a laminating machine and a book-binding machine for teachers to use.
Out in the warehouse, teachers can load up shopping bags full of materials, for the cost of $1 per bag. Big bins are filled with items such as plastic packaging, computer parts, phone parts, bottle caps, plastic tubs, lids, and other things like fabric scraps.
Some areas of the warehouse feature products for $5 or $10 a bag.
"The teachers are very good at stuffing their bags as full as they can," Simon said. "We don't care, we just want to get [the material] out to the kids."
Photograph by Brian Prince
Applied Materials' Nancy Handd, left, looks on as RAFT president Mary Simon
talks with Bonnie Libby about one of the nonprofit's many affordable offerings.
The $10 area offers books by Klutz, a popular publisher of children's project books. The books are returns from around the country that wind up in the company's Sunnyvale warehouse. Klutz passes on the new-looking books to RAFT. For $10, teachers can buy entire sets of the project books--which usually run for more than $15 each--for their classrooms. More than 100,000 of the books have been funneled into local classrooms through RAFT, Simon said.
Other nearly new items include stickers, small toys, cases of colored paper, binders, envelopes, file folders and other office supplies. Promotional items like books, hats and T-shirts are sometimes donated by companies. There is also some furniture available. Software packages sell for just $5 each.
Although RAFT gets its items free, Simon said the nominal fees and membership dues help pay for about 60 percent of the program. The organization gets donations and grants to cover the other 40 percent. Simon said charging a fee also helps prevent waste, since sometimes people will take free items that may not be used later.
The success of RAFT has created a good problem: The 24,000-square-foot warehouse it currently rents is too small. Coincidentally, RAFT learned it must vacate its warehouse by the end of the year. In response, the RAFT board recently approved the start of a $4.5 million capital campaign to purchase a 40,000-square-foot space, somewhere locally.
And to think it all started with some doodads destined for the dump.
For more information, call RAFT at 408/524-9780, or visit the website at raft.net.
Sunnyvale, California Since 1994
Photograph by Brian Prince
