Teddy Bear Project Put on Hold

Teddy Bear Project Put on Hold

Well, the news from Newtown and Sandy Hook Elementary School caught me by surprise; but in some ways I was not all that surprised.  After helping Savannah embark on a worthy cause, as detailed here on Sunday evening, I found this article from al.com which gave me the chills and a rock in my stomach at the same time.

Newtown sets up task force to handle donations

By The Associated Press on January 06, 2013 at 8:30 PM, updated January 07, 2013 at 1:16 AM

NEWTOWN, Conn. (AP) — Chris Kelsey is the tax assessor in Newtown, but for the better part of three weeks, his job has been setting up and organizing a warehouse to hold the toys, school supplies and other gifts donated in the wake of the massacre at the Sandy Hook Elementary school.

In this Monday, Dec. 31, 2012 photo, piles of donated stuffed animals await sorting in a warehouse in Newtown, Conn. Tens of thousands of items have been sent to the town in the wake of the Dec. 14 massacre at the Sandy Hook Elementary School, forcing officials to set up an infrastructure to deal with the donations.

Despite the town's pleas to stop sending gifts, Kelsey said trucks have been arriving daily with tokens of support from across the world, some for the families of those killed, others for the children of Sandy Hook, still others for the town.

"A lot of the town's normal business is still on pause," he said. "I have a couple of people still doing assessor's business, and then if they can, open mail a couple hours too. We're all kind of doing what we can to get this done."

A task force has been set up to coordinate the more than 800 volunteers who have been working to sort the gifts, open mail and answer the thousands of emails and phone calls offering assistance.

The volunteers have begun making a dent in the pile of tens of thousands of teddy bears that stretched to the warehouse ceiling. By last week, they had sorted 30,000 of them into small, medium and large sizes, catalogued them and put them in boxes. They are also separating and boxing piles of crayons, pencils, books and much more.

"It's a ton of stuff, and we have an operation just as big for mail as well," Kelsey said.

There are also 26 large moving boxes in the warehouse, each labeled with a victim's name. When a gift comes in specifically addressed to those families, it goes in those boxes. The families have been coming in periodically to empty them.

A toy giveaway was held for all Newtown children before Christmas and some of the remaining toys and stuffed animals have been taken to children's hospitals. The rest will be stored until the town decides where they should go, Kelsey said. He said letters have been sent to each of the victim's families asking for their input. His cell phone is filled with emails from charities across the country.

"Everybody has a hand out," he said. "We're just beginning that process now. The charities suggested by the families will get the top priority."

The work organizing the warehouse is being done by volunteers from Adventist Community Services, a faith-based group that has done similar work after hurricanes and other natural disasters.

"Our thing is warehouses," said the Rev. William Warcholik, a pastor from Rhode Island. "Our specialty is collecting, organizing and distributing donated goods."

The group was paired with Kelsey after contacting the town's volunteer task force. Kevin and Robin Fitzgerald started the group last year to organize neighborhood cleanups following two storms that brought down trees all over town.

"We referred to it as friends with chain saws," Robin Fitzgerald said.

Immediately after the school massacre, which left 26 people dead, people started calling the Fitzgeralds looking for a way to help in the grief-stricken town. Local churches and businesses began getting similar calls.

After meeting with town officials, the Red Cross and other stakeholders, the Fitzgeralds were put in charge of coordinating the volunteer effort.

They started working in their living room with a couple of cellphones and their own laptop computers. Local businessman Peter D'Amico gave them office space. Companies donated computers, Wi-Fi, phones and other equipment and set up a call center. The Newtown Volunteer Task Force now has a website, a Facebook page, a Twitter account and a toll-free telephone number, (855) 364-6600, with eight lines coming in.

"Our mission here is to ease the burden on the town resources, matching people who feel the need to do something with a task that needed to be done," Kevin Fitzgerald said. "This is work FEMA or someone in government would do after a natural disaster, but there is no such thing for this kind of disaster."

The group has been deploying about 800 volunteers to open the town's mail, work at the warehouse and connect potential donations with the correct fund or organization.

Liz Eaton, 70, who lives in the village of Sandy Hook, was sent to the warehouse to help box bears.

"People at church have said they needed some help," she said. "And I just wanted to help out."

Others are tasked with returning every phone call that has come into the town offering help.

"We had someone offer 26 granite benches for any memorial," Robin Fitzgerald said. "That's put into a list of what we call escalated offers, so we mark that down and when they decide on a memorial they will know about that offer."

The town originally expected it would take the task force about two weeks to complete its work. The Fitzgeralds said the task force now expects to be working for about three months, possibly longer.

"What we're telling people on the phone now is that if you are holding a fundraiser in your local community, we appreciate it, but direct those resources to your local community, that's what the families want," Robin Fitzgerald said. "About 99½ percent of the time that works. But the other half says, 'We're coming anyway.' And then we just give them the address of the warehouse or here."

                While I was experiencing that sick feeling in the pit of my stomach, there was an equal amount of joy which this article brought, as I pondered the dilemma.  America has not let those children and school employees down; we have not forgotten. 

It seems to me and was a shared response my a dear church member on Sunday night that far too often we allow something of this magnitude to take place and after the dust settles we forget.  This was something which seems to happen anytime the media circus dies down and we get back to the regular way of life in our respective areas of the country.

Not true at the moment in regards to Sandy Hook or Newtown.  They are attempting to take care of a massive amount of items coming their way from all parts of the country, as people dig in and reach out with love to those who have been left behind, helping them pull back together and continue on with their lives.  According the above mentioned article, it appears they will be sorting through the items of love for the next several months.

When I shared this situation with Savannah, she was as heart broken as I was.  Not that they had so much stuff; for her it was the thought of the bears being stored away in a cold warehouse, alone and no one to love on them.  We pondered this and I started making calls and brainstorming to see what might be a good course of action for a ten year old who wants to help someone else.

I called my good friend, Mel Johnson with the Alabama Baptist Disaster Relief agency and we spoke of the dilemma.  There is a program they use, whereby they collect a specific type of stuffed animal, prepare an emergency zip lock bag, which they can give to children who have gone through a natural disaster, such as the April Tornadoes of 2011 or Hurricane Sandy.  Again, we are looking at changes in the profile of the ministry Savannah has envisioned, and dealing with a storage issue until the next deployment of this particular ministry of ADR.

There are other opportunities and possibilities for this ministry, and we will explore them over the next few weeks, talk about them and pray about them.  I hope what we will be able to do is some back with another opportunity, something which may benefit our own state and at the same time give us the privilege of helping those who are less fortunate than we are.

Personally, I wish to thank you for your willingness to be a part of this challenge Savannah has placed before us.  Your words of encouragement, calls and offers to be a part of something as big as this could have been, have truly reminded me how precious and sweet you all are.  May God bless you all and get ready we will come back with something else, soon.

JWF January 8, 2013