Well, what a year we’ve had so far! We’ve sent out over 12,000 lovely teddy bears this year alone with more planned shipments before Christmas.
Recently we were contacted by a small charity in Mongolia – bordered by China and Russia! They look after and feed thousands of destitute children from various areas of Mongolia. They call themselves Children’s Hope Mongolia – and we are planning on sending around 350 teddy bears for some of the children they support before Christmas. Over 36% of the population in Mongolia live below the poverty line so teddy bears will bring a little love and comfort to these children who have so very little.
Your lovely teddy bears have been arriving with us in their droves and our wonderful friends from various knitting groups across the country are busy making beautiful little knitted jumpers for us to
put on the teddy bears we send out. Why would we do this when we don’t take knitted teddies? For the simple reason that by putting a knitted jumper on a teddy bear that we send in to a refugee camp, that jumper can be used for a small or new born baby! It doesn’t cost us anything and many of you are happy to put your skills and talents into knitting beautiful little warm jumpers for a needy baby! And small children just love to dress up a teddy bear anyway, regardless of whether the jumper is used in another capacity. But it may also help to save the life of a cold baby through the coming winter. Photo showing ladies from Kingsland hard at work knitting jumpers
Tim and Rupert take 2,500 teddy bears to Ukraine
We’ve had some lovely pictures back from Tim and Rupert who took 2,500 teddy bears to Ukraine this summer along with their medical supplies and First Aid Kits to help on the front line of the war. Rupert tells me that the teddy bears have gone to Lviv to the UNHCR camps set up for refugees fleeing Russian onslaughts and also to the border crossing between Lviv and Krakow in Poland
There are thousands of displaced children, some of whom are travelling alone, and are therefore frightened and traumatised who are being looked after by volunteers travelling with them. And Rupert says that our teddy bears are hugely welcomed by these volunteers who now have something positive to give the children. We all know how a lovely teddy bear, given with love and compassion, can have a profound effect on a suffering child
We send you our heartfelt thanks and please keep them coming to us.
Kurdistan and South Africa
We are also continuing our shipments to Kurdistan and South Africa. In fact, around 500 teddy bears were sent to South Africa in September and we hear they have arrived with Rotary International and are currently being given to children in Trauma centres in hospitals and police stations and various organisations that care for homeless and traumatised children. We’re promised photos shortly.
Kurdistan is very much an ongoing project for us and so far we’ve sent over 8,000 teddy bears this year to children in camps around the country, particularly in Dohuk. Although we’ve been sending teddy bears to YES – Yazidi Emergency Aid – for several years now, we really haven’t scratched the surface yet as there are thousands of children living in camps across that country who are displaced. Many have lost their families and friends and living in a tent for months, even years on end isn’t an ideal scenario. I do love the thought though that many of these children can now snuggle up at night with a special teddy bear sent by you through us at The Teddy Trust.
Letters and Cards
We’ve had so many letters and cards from you which come with the lovely teddy bears you so generously send us. And several of you have put in donations for which we thank you very much. The money you donate is spent on shipping so we are always grateful for any amount you can send.
Special thanks go to Juliet from Tetbury, Stephanie, Ella and for her little note and lovely drawing, all the Porter family who sent us all their Mum’s teddy bears which were given to her by her loving husband, Eli Lamb for his lovely painting and teddy bears, thank you so much Eli, Jen Giddings and her family, Hannah and Dee from East Sussex, Harriet and James and for your donation – thank you so much, Molly Morgan who is ten years old, Wilma – really lovely teddy bears , thank you! Also Gareth and Janice, Sue and Russ Corsini thank you so much for Gregory – he’s lovely, the 1st Ely Brownies Girlguiding in Cambridgeshire East – gorgeous teddy bears thank you, Haniyah, Dave, Hannah, Elijah, Lydia and Gideon and Emily Cragg thank you all of you, Glenys and Steve Allinson from Somerset, Katie Gunn who sent her late mum’s lovely teddy bear collection – that was so kind of you thank you, the prop stores of the drama department of Giggleswick school – thank you whoever arranged that! And thank you to Susan Pike, and children from the Ysgol Cynwyd Sant school in South Wales beautiful teddy bears – thank you so much! And thank you to George Morgan from Wales too!
If I’ve missed you then my apologies but hopefully you will have seen your teddy bears being photographed for our facebook page.
We’ve also been sent many older teddy bears that are too fragile to send to small children around the world and so these go for auction in Stockton-on-Tees where they know us well and have managed to sell around 400 for us thereby raising well over £1,000 during the past three years. Again, all this is used to pay for our shipments so if you have an old teddy bear to send us he can help to send others around the world. And he’ll find a ‘forever’ home with a collector!
Keep sending us your lovely teddy bears.
Please, as always, keep sending us your lovely teddy bears. No other soft toys please and they need to be clean and in good condition too. Keep watching our facebook page which Sharon is constantly updating and thank you so much for your lovely letters and notes that sometimes arrive with the teddy bears. We read and keep every one of them and now have a huge box full of them.
With our very best wishes and love,
Ellie and the Teddy Trust Team!
