The Teddy Bear project is going to LA to offer our caring to victims of the tragic fires and to share our caring for the children and their parents who have been so traumatized by losing so much. Naturally for us to respond we needed to gather funds.
Our first effort was orchestrated by Christine Burych of Stowe VT, an active volunteer for the Teddy Bear Project - Kids Caring for Kids, who put together a local fundraiser. She enlisted town enterprises for a raffle for raising money. There were Duck Luge races, and games for children to participate in, supporting the teddy bear project. PHOTO. This effort was well attended and on the streets of Stowe.
Nusantara, co-owned by Kim Harris in Essex, VT, offered clothes from their warehouse. This began with a few boxes to a small mall store front in Santa Monica and concluded with 26 boxes being trucked out to LA to several others. The fresh new clothes are from Thailand, Nepal, and India - all part of a Fair Trade relationship thus furthering this good work for the victims of these immense fires. Bellavance Trucking in VT also was so gracious and supplied regional trucking plus paying for one of the trips by a national company to be dropped off to the Rotary of Altadena for a pop-up event. Thus bringing free clothes to the people of the area. The following trip was subsidized by the local Colchester-Milton Rotary Club VT and will be dropping off 14 large boxes to Formosa Fire Relief, a non-profit located in LA for this cause. The clothes value is approximately upward of $20,000 and over 400 pounds. We congratulate all of our above-mentioned organizations as a collaborative effort.
As this project grows the person of a small mall store put us in contact with the Clayton Children's Museum in Santa Monica. This led to our meeting their new Director, Thomas Sullivan, who invited us to plan a program with him using their spaces. Our plan is to have one day for inviting classroom children to come in to make cards of caring notes to be hung around d the bear's neck, that will then be given to trauma-stricken children the following day at the Museum. On the third day we will head out to Altadena to present children in their neighborhoods with teddy bears also. The bears will also have cards coming from children in Asheville who just experienced their own natural disaster, plus children from other schools - even all the way from Costa Rica.
Victoria White, a renown artist in LA who does work with children in schools on compassion and painting, will accompany us in the art work there. LA photographer Yves Bright will be keeping a photo record of our program. Thank you to everyone who has helped us towards this success.