'Project Bear Hug' Donates Stuffed Animals To Fire Department

GLENVIEW, IL – A gurney filled with stuffed animals was dropped off at the Glenview Fire Department Tuesday after being collected by an enterprising group of three Glenview teens. Lila Becker and her friends, Hannah Sawyer and Tricia Newman, all 13, established “Project Bear Hug” in June after talking with Glenview Fire Chief Ralph Ensign about providing stuffed animals for children transported on ambulances, according to a village news release.

The girls came up with the idea while attending a summer school STEM class at District 34’s Attea Middle School.

"I was reading a book on philanthropic ideas for kids," Lila said. "We said, ‘Let’s do this.’"

After receiving an endorsement letter from Ensign, the seventh-grade girls set up a website and began asking family, friends and neighbors for donations of new stuffed animals.

Their goal is to provide "teddy bears and other stuffed animals to local first responders so that they may give them to children going through a variety of crises," according to the website.

After they’d collected several dozen stuffed animals, they delivered them to Fire Station 6, 1215 Waukegan Rd., on Sept. 18. (Get Patch real-time email alerts for the latest news for Glenview — or your Illinois community. And iPhone users: Check out Patch's new app.)

Ensign said two of the stuffed animals will be stowed on each of Glenview’s four ambulances, and when children are transported, firefighter/paramedics can offer them as a way to comfort or calm their fears, according to the release.

"It’s a lot more traumatic for a child to ride in an ambulance than an adult," Ensign said. "This is going to help some kids who are not having a good experience."

Because children are only occasionally transported by ambulance in Glenview, the girls plan to investigate how to donate to hospitals and social service agencies that deal with children going through rough or scary circumstances.

For more information, take a look at the Project Bear Hug website.

_{Top photo: Firefighters Chase Olson, Tim O'Shea and Jeff Burdorf wheel a gurney full of donated stuffed animals to an ambulance at Fire Station 6, accompanies by donors Hannah Sawyer (left) and Lila Becker (Village of Glenview)}