Two teens rescued school supplies for 20,000 students

Two Connecticut teenagers have supplied nearly 20,000 students with free school materials in two years, all of it rescued from the trash. It started with a pencil. Grace Millard and Jordan Chen, then freshmen at their Woodbridge high school, kept noticing what their classmates threw away: half-used notebooks, poster boards, markers that still worked. Grace picked up an abandoned pencil in the hallway one day and pointed out that it only needed sharpening. The two, former elementary classmates reconnected over a shared frustration with waste, emailed local libraries and museums asking for leftovers. One replied with a box of half-used markers. A library offered 200 children's books it had no room for. They named the nonprofit Restoring Rainbows and set out donation bins around town. It has since grown to more than 3,000 volunteers in 53 countries. Grace now writes guides for strangers who email asking how to start the same thing in their own towns.