Scottish retailer, Pencil Me In donates 576 pencils to the Divine Destiny Academy School in Blantyre, Malawi
When Sarah Holmes, the owner of Pencil Me In in Elgin, found out her son’s head teacher was going to Malawi to visit her daughter who is teaching at the Divine Destiny Academy School, she offered her some pencils that the shop had been incorrectly sent from a supplier.
“We had a few boxes of pencils that we’d been sent incorrectly from our supplier – round instead of hex – so I offered her as many as she wanted,” said Sarah. “She ended up taking four boxes – which is 576 pencils – to Malawi. We also donated some pencil sharpeners too.”
Pencil Me In offers a personalised pencil printing service in-store (and online), so there are quite a few misprints. “We do give some of these misprints away to one of the local high schools through a teacher we know. We do have to be careful though, as some of these have rude words on them!” says Sarah.
Other misprinted pencils are used as test pencils, so end up of with hundreds of words all over them.
“Since we posted on Instagram about our pencils going to Malawi, we had another customer contact us who is also visiting Malawi next year so we’ll hopefully be able to donate more there too,” says Sarah. “And of course there is Pens for Kids UK who we’ve been following for a while who were also at London Stationery Show and are hopeful they could make use of our misprint pencils and pens.”
