Adoption.com Donates Build-A-Bears To Waiting Children

Adoption.com Donates Build-A-Bears To Waiting Children

Wonderful news for everyone who participated in the “Hugs Sweet Hugs” event in late June! Over 50,000 bears were made by those of you who made a trip to your local Build-A-Bear retailer, and stuffed and donated a toy for one of many waiting children.

Adoption.com, along with Build-A-Bear workshops, and the Joint Council on International Children’s Services teamed together to sponsor this campaign, that will provide toys for children around the world who are waiting for an adoptive home.

An estimated 50,000 Build-A-Bear toys created by caring customers with love and donated to the program, at no cost to the builder of the toy. Approximately 1,100 of those bears were obtained by Adoption.com for distributing to children waiting for adoptive families both in the U.S. and internationally. Members of the Adoption Media staff have already distributed 400 of the bears to children in Arizona, with the help of the Arizona division of child, youth, and family services.

With over 143 million children awaiting adoption worldwide, and over 114,000 in the U.S. alone, that is a lot of “Hugs” to be provided. The hope is that these children, many of them orphans, will find some comfort hugging a new bear of their very own, while they wait for a family of their very own.

Nathan Gwilliam, the Adoption Media CEO commented about the event...

"We were very grateful that Thomas DiFilipo allowed us to be part of this project. Although adoption is an amazing act of sacrifice and love, most of the orphans in the world today will never have this blessing. In addition to considering adoption, we need to do better at taking care of all orphans around the world. These children are our children and our responsibility."

What a super project this appears to have been! An outstanding number of bears were made and donated by people like yourselves, and kids the world over will feel some of the love and care that was stuffed into them on their behalf. With so many children in need, projects like this can show those boys and girls that we are all doing what we can, and they have not been forgotten, I am certainly one who is hoping we will see this as an annual event.