Helping Out & Staying Healthy

In 2020, as we all faced new challenges with the unfolding health care crisis, the Bear crew at the Vermont Teddy Bear asked ourselves how we could help.

We decided to put new Bear creation on hold and donate our supply of 620 surgical and N95 masks. (These masks protect our crew from breathing in fur and stuffing fibers as the bears are made.) The masks went to the Medical Countermeasures & Strategic National Stockpile, Division of Emergency Preparedness, Response, and Injury Prevention, Vermont Department of Health.

 

Next on the list was to start making masks. A few of our crew volunteered to round up materials at our manufacturing facility to make kits for face mask creation (we stayed a safe distance apart!) and some more team memebers and some community members volunteered to start making masks from home.

Fast forward two months and we created a network of over 150 at home sewers helping us! Ultimately we dontated over 100,000 masks throughout the state of Vermont, enough to give 20% of Vermonters masks.

A big thanks to some of our partners: Darn Tough Vermont, Seventh Generation, Burton Snowboards and Bee's Wrap who helped source materials and joined our sewing network.