It was like Christmas arrived six months early for Kellie Parcels when she walked into the new Donation Station operated by Kamehameha Schools and Kupu Hawaii, a nonprofit organization teaching environmental responsibility to youth.

“I thought I was going to have to run everybody over,” the 31-year-old Makiki resident joked. “It’s like a secret I don’t want to tell anybody about.”

A variety of toys, musical instruments, office supplies and furniture line the walls of the former Aloha Key storefront at the corner of Cooke and Auahi streets in Kakaako. Parcels, who is preparing to start her teaching career at Pearl Harbor Elementary, said she was excited and relieved to find such a convenient resource.

“For a brand-new teacher, you need anything and everything you can get,” she said. “They have a good variety of items here. I wish there were more places like this.”

Following a pilot program in 2015 that diverted more than 4,300 pounds of educational supplies and furniture from Oahu landfills, Kamehameha Schools decided to expand the concept in April to benefit anyone involved in education, from preschool to high school and higher education, including home schooling, day care and community centers. While donations are collected only from Kamehameha Schools employees, all those with a legitimate, verifiable educational affiliation are invited to visit the Donation Station as many times as necessary to get the materials they need. And everything is free.

“As long as there’s an educational purpose, we tell people to come and take as much as they need,” said Kamehameha Schools sustainability manager Amy “Kalai” Brinker. “This year we have a bigger space and folks who remember from last year, so we’ll probably have twice as many items, if not more.”

Employees at Kamehameha Schools headquarters in downtown Honolulu have become “advocates for sustainability,” Brinker said.

“We’re really just trying to do what Hawaiians did very well, which was understand the impacts of a decision not only financially, but also socially and environmentally,” she said. “That triple bottom line is a new old way of making decisions.

“Recycling is one thing but reduction is important as well. Reduce and reuse are those top two tiers where you can really affect the amount of waste you’re generating. (The Donation Station) also reduces the impacts on communities we care about by keeping these materials out of the landfills.”

The Donation Station will be open from 4 to 6 p.m. Thursdays and Fridays and noon to 2 p.m. Saturdays through Dec. 16. Kupu interns will assist in day-to-day operations, helping to secure donations and monitor inventory while interacting with visitors.

Find more information about the program at ksbe.edu/DonationStation.