By Reimagining “Waste”, Grants-Cibola County Schools Are Creating Opportunities for Disadvantaged Children
A huge shout-out to our great partners at Kay-Twelve, especially Kevin Foote, Leesa Smith, and Garrett Miller, and to their client the Grants-Cibola County (NM) Schools for helping to change the lives of disadvantaged children.
When Grants-Cibola County Schools ordered new desks and chairs for Grants High School, they didn’t want to see their surplus but still usable furnishings to go to waste. They asked furniture dealer Kay-Twelve to provide a better solution. Kay-Twelve in turn recommended IRN – The Reuse Network.
One catch. The old desks and chairs, nearly 2,000 of them, had to be removed, and the new installed, over the Saturday and Sunday before Thanksgiving.
Happily, Kay-Twelve had a great partner to move and pack the furnishings: Innovative Moving Systems out of Albuquerque. Headed up by Brandon Moss, Louis Trujillo, and Kevin Neal, the IMS crew managed to cram more than 600 pieces into each of three trailers, with even a little room to spare. IRN’s logistics manager Jim Buchholz found reliable truckers to handle the weekend loads, and gave up his own weekend to make sure they arrived on schedule. Our onsite Project Manager Coulson Oswald flew out to assemble all the pieces in Grants and get the project done.
Altogether, the Grants Cibola County Schools provided 963 chairs and 920 student desks for reuse through IRN’s network of nonprofit partners. They are being shipped to support underprivileged students in the Mexican State of Chihuahua. Apart from the societal benefit, that’s nearly 30 tons of useful assets diverted from New Mexico landfills.
By reimagining “waste”, Grants-Cibola County Schools are creating opportunities for children and communities many miles away. It’s that kind of outcome that keeps us going.
