The Christmas of a Thousand Bears

The Year is 2022.

Ever since the start of the pandemic in 2020, if I’m going to be completely honest, I probably spent the first few months feeling quite sorry for myself. I was wallowing and so focused on how it was affecting my life. During all the (several) lockdowns, and then the strange new school regulations, and social distancing, I realised this was the new normal and I had to make sure that my parents were mentally and emotionally “Ok.”

I myself was struggling financially, as I had lost my job due to the pandemic. The only way for me to remain sane during this time was to focus on the things that I was grateful for. I was grateful that I had a comfortable and safe home to stay in. I was grateful that I had enough money and savings to provide for myself in the long run. And, of course, during this difficult transition, I was grateful that I had time, emergency finances, and other resources to make the “new normal” a little bit less abnormal.

However, this also made me think about all of the people out there who are in less fortunate positions than me. I decided to turn my negative energy into a positive outlet. Rather than complaining about how much of a toll the pandemic had taken on me and how stressful it has been to all of us, I decided that I was going to use my time (seeing as I was jobless anyway) to try and have a positive impact on other people's lives. I started dabbling with and helping out a few charities here and there, doing whatever little I could, such as cooking soups by the bucket-loads for the community centre in the townships, running a neighbourhood blanket drive, and so on.

However, it was only around the end of November 2021, a little while before Christmas, that an idea struck me, and I immediately leapt to action. I had been trying to give some odd jobs to a few local seamstresses (I was trying to start my own clothing brand, so I needed the help, and they needed the money). These seamstresses mostly lived in the townships surrounding our city and were really very desperate for any form of income. I had always wished that I was in a position to be able to help them more financially, and although I had tried to help and get them more permanent sewing gigs, the job market was particularly arid during the pandemic.

Also, I had previously volunteered in the highly impoverished city of Siedlce, Eastern Poland. The community centre there was adjacent to a very basic, overcrowded, and drastically underfunded primary school for the children. The workers at the community centre had told me that many of the children there had never received a Christmas present, in fact, most of them never heard of Christmas. I decided that seeing as Santa Claus was probably subject to some sort of COVID-related travel ban in that region, I would have to do his work for him!

The plan thus worked as follows: I requested fabric and stuffing donations from several fabric stores in the area, of which many were happy to gift these materials to the cause. Next, I also asked some local businesses and companies for financial donations, that would make up the wages to be paid to the seamstresses. Next, the seamstresses (who were extremely grateful to be able to make additional income, easily ten times that of what they would normally make in that time period), then began sewing hundreds of teddy bears, which we would then eventually gift to the children of Siedlce during Christmas. In addition to the bears, I also conducted a toy drive around my neighbourhood to collect as many Christmas gifts as possible for the children.

We were hoping to collect at least around 1000 Christmas gifts. The project became known as the “Fushi Bear Project.” I was very touched by how the neighbourhood pulled together, some even went out to buy brand new toys for donating. In the end, we managed to collect over 1200 gifts within two weeks. But it was not easy. I spent many nights up until past midnight sorting gifts by age, wrapping them, counting them, sanitising them, and placing them safely into boxes.

I was absolutely exhausted, and there were many-a-1:00 am that I shed some tears out of sheer fatigue and frustration. I would think to myself: “Why did I even consider doing this? This was a terrible idea. There's no way I can ever collect enough gifts.” But I was motivated to make sure every child will receive a gift, and I had already started anyway… it would be too late to quit now.

Eventually, the big day came. I asked my brother to help me drive the gifts over because there were just too many! We ended up going with two spacious cars, filled to the ceiling with boxes of teddy bears and toys. As far as I knew, we were just delivering the toys to the community centre. We did not know that the community centre had, in fact, already notified the children and called all of the children together to receive their gifts.

That very moment when we drove in there, hearing all of the children cheering and chanting… we could tell that they all knew what they were there for; and that they knew what we were there for. I was so exhausted from two weeks of toy collecting, wrapping and basically surviving on very little sleep, that when I heard the cheering and saw all the children jumping up with joy and excitement, my eyes welled up with tears. I parked my car and had to speak to myself very sternly, saying: “you have to stop crying NOW. The children are so happy to see you! Suck it up!” And with that, I pulled myself together and began unloading the toys. Volunteers from the community centre helped to carry the dozens of boxes inside and began distributing the toys.

From now on, I don’t think a Christmas will go by where I will not remember those huge smiles, the children being so excited, swirling their bears/toys around, and many of them running up to hug me as I was walking back to my car. Those smiling innocent faces and the sounds of laughter are forever imprinted in my heart. Years from now when people will ask me “so how was the pandemic for you”, I doubt that there will be any memory that will stand out more brightly and clearly as this one. it will remain a very special and wonderful memory and life lesson for me.

After how well the project went, we have decided that we will be running the Fushi Bear Project every year, and make it an all-year-round operation starting from this year, 2022, collecting donations, coordinating with seamstresses and charity sewing centres, and locating schools, hospitals, and other places where the bears will find their forever homes in the arms of a deserving and kind-hearted child.