“What started as a school project became a movement.”
Kriti Gupta was a 9th grader at Upper Saint Clair High School, Pittsburgh, when she began to notice how far hardship had spread during COVID-19 and how much students in nearby underfunded schools were struggling without the resources most kids take for granted.
While in 7th grade, she had participated in a project on homelessness in America. Her social studies teacher, Mr. Bowers, saw her passion and helped her transform it into something real. CCL-KIDS was born.
What started as one student's school project has grown into a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that has secured over $29,000 in resources, partnered with school districts, earned statewide recognition, and directly served 450 students in and around the Pittsburgh area.
Kriti Gupta
Founder and Director, CCL-KIDS · Pittsburgh, PA
Kriti Gupta receiving funding support for CCL-KIDS
Student-Led.
Community-Rooted.
The COVID-19 pandemic widened an already significant gap between well-resourced and underfunded schools. While some students continued learning with laptops and stable home environments, many others fell further behind without reliable supplies, without mentors, and without anyone advocating for them.
Kriti Gupta saw this not as someone else's problem, but as a chance to act. She founded CCL-KIDS in 2020 and immediately got to work, organizing backpack drives to remove the burden of school supply costs and filling them with notebooks, folders, art materials, and writing utensils for students who needed them.
CCL-KIDS began by partnering with local neighborhoods and community groups, and after 2022 expanded its reach to school districts across the greater Pittsburgh region. Over six years, the annual backpack drive has supported 450 K-12 students.
She also saw that dignity matters as much as supplies. CCL-KIDS collaborates with local women's homeless shelters to distribute feminine hygiene care packages to teenage girls, helping ensure that basic comfort and dignity are never barriers to their education.
The work has been recognized by Junior Achievement of Western Pennsylvania, the Allegheny County Courthouse, and the Mayor's Office. But the recognition that matters most is in the faces of students who showed up to school with a full backpack for the first time.