Madison Wilson is changing the world.
One crayon at a time.
The 8-year-old Solvang girl is promoting diversity with her multicultural, “World Changer” line of crayons.
Each 24-pack of crayons consists of 16 skin colors, four hair colors and four eye colors. Madison, who’s black, said she wants kids to have more options for skin colors than just peach and brown.
Madison and her mother, Vashti Wilson, promoted the crayons Wednesday afternoon on ABC’s “The Kelly Clarkson Show.” They hope the publicity will help them raise an additional $50,000 toward Madison’s fundraising efforts to promote diversity.
As reported this summer in the News-Press, Madison dreamed to see more people of color represented in art and books. With her mother’s support, Madison, a third-grader at Solvang Elementary School, started Madi’s Treasure Box.
Within six weeks, she raised more than $40,000 on GoFundMe to bring multicultural books and crayons to local schools.
The effort grew to provide multicultural books and crayons for 14 U.S. schools and Children’s Bureau, a nonprofit that realized the importance of diversity.
“For children, being able to draw themselves accurately or read a book that has characters that look just like them provides a sense of belonging and helps them to feel less isolated in the world,” said Andra Martinez, the Children’s Bureau vice president of communications and development, in a news release.
But there was one problem. Madison’s attempt to purchase thousands of multicultural crayons was proving unsuccessful.
So Madison decided to make her own, and her mother was all for it.
Vashti said she and her daughter decided to call the crayons “World Changer” because Madison told CBS News national correspondent Chip Reid that’s what she wanted to be when she grew up. The interview aired on the “CBS Evening News with Norah O’Donnell” several weeks after the News-Press’ story about Madison.
“All I see in a crayon box is usually just black, a type of brown and then white. Why not have lots of browns and lots of shades?” Madison told the News-Press.
Vashti said her daughter came up with the idea for Madi’s Treasure Box after asking her about why most movies don’t have actors and actresses that look like her. From there, their conversation moved on to art supplies, crayons and books.
In addition to the News-Press and CBS, Madison was covered by other media such as The Washington Post and NBC News.
“My goal is to donate a box of crayons to (inner city) schools for every box of crayons people buy,” Madison explained in the news release.
“I think it can happen. I want to change the world one crayon at a time!”
email: dmason@newspress.com
