Celebrating Diversity and Inclusion in Childhood: The Story of All of Us Crayons

by Sabine Joseph

 

As the loving breath of the earth surrounds us each day, the opportunity to become aware of our beautiful, diverse world is presented to us - in all its gifts of nature, animals, and human beings.

With these gifts, we are presented with two paths. We can embrace and receive the abundance of joy that diversity offers, or we can choose to navigate a world void of these beautiful gifts.

In the early days of 2020, my daughter presented me with a sheet of paper and asked me to draw Grandma. As I looked down at the set of beeswax crayons we had on our living table, it was quite clear that none of those crayons reflected the beautiful brown shade that grandma was. I knew if I did not respond to this request, I would send a message that Grandma’s beautiful skin did not deserve a crayon to match it. Our skin color, our neighbors’ skin colors, did not deserve a crayon. My heart ached.

I searched for a beeswax skin tone crayon set, but one did not exist. I then set out to create a skin tone crayon set for our home - and it turned out everyone wanted a set for their home too. The result was All of Us Crayons.

Currently, All of Us Crayons are in forty-two small shops and fourteen schools around the country. We have sold thousands of crayon sets to loving homes around the world. Our incredible growth directly reflects our love for people and our desire for everyone to be seen and appreciated for simply just being.

Throughout our journey, many parents have sent us notes describing the happiness they received from seeing their children present their self-drawings with such joy in their hearts. These testimonials have led me to believe that the world in which these children lived had begun to make them feel invisible. Naturally, as children, they didn’t know how to express this feeling or even understand it. But All of Us Crayons gave them the freedom to present themselves to the world.

This still gives me chills and floods my heart with so much joy. It is an honor to create the tools that allow children to be seen. It is an honor to create spaces for children to appreciate the diversity among each other.

All of Us Crayons strives to plant seeds of kindness and connections in hopes of seeing these seeds grow strong roots of solidarity within our communities.

The beauty of our diverse world lies in the simplest of forms. When we embrace the differences amongst us, we hold the power to guide our next generation forward with the seeds of inclusion and the inner momentum to always embrace the world around them with open arms and loving hearts.

Sabine Joseph is the founder and CEO of All of Us Crayons. She is a proud mother to an incredibly loving four-year-old who attends their local Waldorf school. They live in their beautiful home in Long Island, NY, along with Grandma, Grandpa, and their pet ‘fishies.’ For more information or to purchase crayons, please visit allofuscrayons.com or follow @allofuscrayons on Instagram.