The Students Mining NYC Public Schools’ Lost-and-Found Collections for New Yorkers in Need

“Nobody would ever look through it,” 16-year-old Skylar Aaron said of the “giant mountain” of unclaimed belongings at Stuyvesant High School’s lost and found. So far, she and classmate Shayna Wilson, 17, have salvaged more than 2,000 pounds of clothing donations for the homeless. 

After walking back from a science fair last year, Skylar Aaron, 16, and Shayna Wilson, 17, both seniors at Stuyvesant High School, said something about the sight of the lost and found collection—two massive yellow crates overflowing with coats, lunch boxes, and other neglected wares, pushed to the side of a wall by the school’s entrance—irked them enough to start asking questions. 

“Nobody would ever look through it,” Aaron said, describing the piles of unclaimed belongings from any number of the school’s roughly 3,000 students as “a giant mountain.”  

The two classmates are founders of Stuyvesant’s homeless coalition, a club which organizes clothing and food drives to local charity groups, and offers to pick up and deliver donations from other schools.

That day, their assistant principal told them unclaimed items are tossed away at the end of each year, and gave them permission to sift through the crates for salvageable donations. Last year, they did that twice—collecting about 200 pounds of items the first time, and 250 pounds the second time. 

The unruly sight of the lost-and-found pile, the girls explained, became the seed of an idea to partner with other local schools to pick up items they could salvage for donations, rather than landfills. 

Enlisting their mothers’ help to drive them, Aaron and Wilson partnered with two other public schools—offering pick up and drop off services for items they could pull from their own collections—and have so far donated over 2,000 pounds of unclaimed clothing. 

Now in their senior years, Aaron and Wilson plan to help the club partner with more public schools to collect donations from their lost and founds, including the middle and elementary schools they used to attend.

‘I wanted to have an immediate impact‘ on the issue‘

Aaron and Wilson, who founded the Stuyvesant Homeless Coalition in their sophomore year in March 2025, told City Limits that witnessing the hardships that people who lack homes endure—and how those challenges seem much deeper in communities just blocks uptown from some of Manhattan’s wealthiest neighborhoods—underpins their ambition. 

“Every morning when I walk to school, near 72nd Street Station, there’s so many people gathered around,” Aaron said. “I feel like everyone just walks by, because it’s New York City, and everyone is taught to ignore these types of things. But I really just wanted to find a way to help.”

Wilson described her experiences changing apartments—which included four moves in the last eight years, deeper into Harlem from Midtown—and witnessing more prevalent homelessness in her neighborhood, as moments that have stuck with her. 

“I had an apartment on 86th, and then on 96th, and the difference in just 10 blocks is so apparent,” Wilson said. “I clearly see the changes as you go further uptown, and it just made me care more about the issue of homelessness.”

‘We saw the potential for it to be expanded all across New York City‘

After realizing how massive their school’s lost-and-found collection was, the girls understood that they could bring in much more by partnering with other public schools to do the same with theirs. 

“We sort of reached out to every public school that we thought would like to join the pilot,” Wilson said. “They were pretty flexible with how we would come pick it up. I had my mom drive us and we collected the bags.” Common destinations for the items include Goodwill stores and The Bowery Mission, a longstanding shelter and nonprofit downtown, because they accept a variety of things. 

Two other schools joined the pilot, including PS. 77 and East Middle School, both on the Upper East Side. “We saw the potential for it to be expanded all across New York City, because these are thousands of pounds of items that could be donated and are just thrown away,” Aaron said. 

This year, the club plans to grow—to dig through their lost and found to salvage donations two or three times, hold food and clothing drives, and expand the number of schools they partner with. 

“I’d like us to reach out to our old schools, because my elementary school was interested, but we contacted them too late. Now we’re ahead, and we’ll have more success this year,” Wilson said. 

Public schools that are interested in joining their initiative can schedule pick-up appointments through their website. 

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