Operation Teddy Bear Care Holiday Drive

DECEMBER 2008 GOAL: Provide 1,000 South African children who have been impacted by the AIDS epidemic with a personal gift. South African children are left vulnerable by the thousands due to the AIDS epidemic. These children live in abject poverty without any personal comforts. Many don't even get one meal a day. For them, it is just a matter of surviving from one day to the next. The aim of this project is to provide small personal comforts for these children. This holiday season, we hope to give 1,000 South African children a gift of a humble teddy bear and some food. We want to show these children people care about them, bring a smile to their faces, give them a toy of their own to cuddle and a little nourishment.

PROGRESS REPORT NOV 18, 2008: Donation packages for 355 children have been purchased. We need people to purchase 645 more donation packages to reach our initial goal. We strongly suggest purchasing Package 2, Package 4 or Package 6, each of which now include basic food packs in addition to teddy bears. Malnutrition and starvation are major problems for these children. To date Operation Teddy Bear Care has provided 21 food packs.

100% of the money raised through this project goes to help provide comfort for children whose lives have been impacted by the AIDS epidemic.
DONATE NOW! CLICK HERE TO PURCHASE A DONATION PACKAGE. THERE ARE NO SHIPPING COSTS. We suggest purchasing one of the packages that include a basic food pack because many of these children don't get even one full meal a day.

Or, Give Up Your Holiday Gifts This Year! Instead, Ask Family & Friends To Give To These Wonderful South African Kids! We're encouraging ALL members Operation Teddy Bear Care to tell your family and friends NOT to buy you gifts for the holidays. Tell them to donate to Operation Teddy Bear Care instead and send some much-needed comfort to a child suffering in South Africa.

Here is an email you can forward to your family and friends like I did.


Find more photos like this on Operation Teddy Bear Care

The above picture slideshow is of various deliveries that the crew in South Africa has already made to children in several clinics so far. You'll see that in some of them, the kids have received hearts or other stuffed toys... these were actually shipped directly to Maureen (co-founder of OTBC) not donated through the site itself. You'll also see that in some cases, the teddy bears are handmade - those are handmade by Maureen, and were her original efforts towards providing gifts for these orphaned children, and you'll also see the teddy bear cookies she bakes at home on a wood burning stove! and delivers by the hundred.

I can't bake cookies in my modern electric oven, let alone in a wood burning stove!

Anyway, you'll see what a grass roots effort this movement started with, one woman whose only electricity is from a single solar panel she's installed. She doesn't enjoy a lot of the modern comforts we all take for granted, but she's commited to providing a gift to these kids this Holiday Season - and I think that's pretty damn awesome.