Stuffed Animals for Emergencies (SAFE)

Hi everyone!

I realized I haven't done a SAFE post in a while and wanted to share some of these great pictures we received. If you have been following my blog for a while, you will know I run a NC chapter for Stuffed Animals for Emergencies. We have many many caring folks that will donate their gently used stuffed animals to us and we clean/sanitize them to give them to children that have been in traumatic situations. I can say from a first hand basis these animals mean a lot and are such a huge comfort during these times.

Earlier this spring, we received thousands of stuffed animals (over 2,500 to be exact) and sorted, sanitized and boxed them up and sent them out to Haiti through a partnering organization called Loving Hugs. I wanted to share some of the pictures they have sent of these donations being shared with the children of Haiti.

For those of you that donated....THANK YOU! A picture is worth a thousand words and these say it all. If you would like to donate or know of an organization that would benefit from these, please let me know. I am trying to make new contacts in the Raleigh/Durham/Cary area, so it's taking me a while to start from scratch again :-)

http://www.stuffedanimalsforemergencies.org/Home.html

Beautiful gifts

I'm overwhelmed by the generosity shown by others.....

Over 2,500 stuffed animal donations received

1,393 sorted and approved for donation, cleaned and sanitized

All together 713 pounds of animals

36 boxes on their way to Haiti right now

Priceless.

I was incredibly happy and humbled to help our very surprised local UPS man (who thought I just had one box for him to pick up) load them into the truck...side by side with my wonderful hubby. The generosity that has been shown in the past few months with these donations has really been something. These animals have come from all over, from folks that just wanted to be a comfort to these kids. Here are just a few examples:

*Former co-workers gathering them

*3 different girl scout troops

*2 elementary schools

*3 children's birthday parties

*A mom who just lost her child and donated all of his animals

*2 large companies

*2 churches

*A mom's group

*And many other families that had to heart to donate these animals instead of just tossing them away

I originally wanted to post a picture of all of the animals in my living room, but with the numbers so high, I had them everywhere, so that wasn't really possible! I did manage to get pictures of the boxes before we shipped them out in our living room and I have included them.

To everyone that has donated or helped to get the word out for SAFE, thank you so much! OK, thank you doesn't even begin to cover it. You have helped a child. YOU have made a difference! That stuffed animal is something they will cherish. You have given the gift of hope, shown that child that someone cares no matter how dire their situation may be. It will be something they will carry with them the rest of their lives. Below is a picture of the boxes before their shipment and the others are from Loving Hugs, which is the organization I'm working with to get these to Haitian children.

THANK YOU!

A Haitian family that had been living on a tug boat receiving a donation

Stuffed animals at work

Too precious....

http://www.stuffedanimalsforemergencies.org/Home.html

http://www.lovinghugs.org/

On the ball!

So, I have accumulated quite a few stuffed animals in the past month that I needed to clean and go through because I'm going to be getting *hopefully* hundreds more in the next couple of days, so I had a lot of work to do! My wonderful husband had pulled all of my shipments out of the boxes and ran them through the steam/sanitizing cycle, I just needed to sort them and go through them. This ended up taking longer than I thought! I probably worked on this for at least 4 hours to get through the pile I had, but I got it finished up! In case you are wondering, here is what 323 stuffed animals look like piled high and overflowing:

And then all boxed up:

**Note the shameless Lowe's plug :-)

These were going to be mailed out today, but with the "winter storm" we got here at the beach, I hung close to play in the 3 inches of snow!

Our house close by the beach...covered with snow!

Our dog Pugsley didn't like it so well

Anyway, the last of the stuffed animals will be mailed out to the NC Hwy Patrol this week. They are super excited to get them and they want to give each of their troopers 4 or 5 animals to keep in their trunks....all 1,825 troopers! Looks like I will be busy for a while!

I usually work from home, but since my department just went through a major re-org last month and we have mostly new team members, they have asked myself and another regional co-worker to come in for a couple of days. So, I will be commuting on Monday and Tuesday. I let all of my old work buddies know I was coming into the office and they are bringing stuffed animals too...in fact, the word has spread so far and I've gotten calls from all sorts of folks that are collecting for me. I hope I have enough room in the Pilot! All of these animals will go towards the first batch of a rather large Haiti donation to comfort children affected by the earthquake. For anyone reading, if you or anyone you know has stuffed animals they would like to donate, please let me know!

Tomorrow I am excited to be going to Wilmington to see my friend Meredith speak at her church on adoption. I know she's probably getting nervous, but she's going to do great! And how lucky am I to get to see her two weekends in a row!

Hope everyone is well and planning a great Valentine's Day!

SAFE

Ever since I started the NC (and parts of SC) chapter of SAFE (Stuffed Animals for Emergencies), I've had some folks ask what exactly it is I do. Here is the run down.....

My contact information is saved on the main website, and I get a pretty good number of emails a day to respond to. There are several groups all around the state doing stuffed animal drives right now to mail to me, which is pretty exciting! I am also on a few local Yahoo groups where folks can contact me about donation opportunities. I usually get in about a package a week on average I would say. These folks that are donating are AWESOME! Instead of throwing out these stuffed animals, they will go to a child that really needs that comfort.

So, then they sit in boxes for about a week or two (depending upon how crazy my life is at that point) in the corner of my bedroom. I'm actually looking at 2 boxes and 2 trash bags full right now to go through :-) Once I'm ready , I look through each of them for cleanliness and wear and tear and then cut the tags off. This was a SMALL PART of my December stash!



For Christmas, the rebates on washers and dryers were so great, Bobby and I decided to get a new set, complete with the steam option. In just 15 minutes, I can pop my animals in my dryer and they will be steamed, sanitized and ready to go!

Then they go to their temporary home in our garage, which my hard working husband and father in law cleaned out and organized just for this purpose

Of course you know I have a nice, neat Excel spreadsheet for all of this! I am currently contacting organizations and agencies across 3 counties to donate too. Anything from the county DSS to foster homes, homeless shelters, highway patrol, etc. Hopefully I can finalize a few drop offs this week so I have room for the next boxes that are waiting my touch!

If you know anyone (or if you) have stuffed animals you do not need or use anymore, please consider donating to SAFE (the website is on the left side of my page). If you are close to me, I'm happy to pick them up :-) Also, if you know of an organization that could use them, please let me know! I'm hoping to extend my reach with this, but I'm taking it one week at a time!

Running out of room!

I am defeated. My house has won. We haven't even been in it two years and the "stuff" has won out. I don't even want to open my closet at this point or walk into the garage. I like organization projects, but I just haven't had the time to take these on. Between the ever going adoption talk between Bobby and I and the new SAFE project I am now heading up (see link on the left side of my blog now for more information)...we are going to run out of room even quicker. We have a play room upstairs, which will become Kyleigh's room once the baby is here, and while we are A LONG WAY AWAY from that reality, I still find myself wondering what in the world I'm going to do with all of the stuff up there? And the garage. We cleaned out half of it after my dad passed to give his mustang a good home, but prompted shoved everything else to the other side....in all intentions of going through it soon too. That was January.

I am SO thankful to already be getting such a great response to the SAFE website and will have donations coming in from all over the state soon. I am still working with donation sites in Horry County, SC and hope to move calls to Brunswick county sometime this week. That said, we will need to store numerous amounts of stuffed animals. I need time to sort through them...to clean them before I can donate them. While my loving husband is supportive and loving about my new endeavor the question came "And where are we going to keep all of these in the process?"

So time to wipe some sweat off our brows to get it done. He's called his dad, who will be coming down this Wednesday to help get the garage cleaned out. Then we will be buying shelving for the garage and hopefully have it organized by next week. A tall order! Of course that leaves our closet and the play room, which I'm hoping I can put off for a little bit longer! Sounds like a good Christmas break project I can do!