School students have a lot of various activities to do with their free time. The students at the York Comprehensive High School prefer to use this time to make stuffed animals for sick children, the Herald Online reports.
The students not only make stuffed animals. They also raise money with which they buy teddy bears to donate to sick kids.
One of them is fourteen-year old Sydney McCurry who can always use a new teddy bear. Sydney does not attend high school because of lifelong health problems. They have kept her in hospitals since she was 4 months old. She is receiving treatment for internal stomach problems in Charlotte. Her mother, Nancy, and grandmother stay with her at the Ronald McDonald House. “It’s nice to get a little surprise,” Nancy McCurry said.
Sydney got her latest teddy bear just in time for Valentine’s Day. It came from the student council at York.
They raised nearly $5,000 in two months to donate Build-A-Bear stuffed animals to sick children, junior Aisha Ozog said, through the council’s Build-A-Heart fundraiser. That was enough to make roughly 450 furry friends.
The students then delivered in person the bears to Charlotte that they made early Sunday at the store. “I like it and that’s pretty much all I can say,” said a smiling Sydney. She adds has so many stuffed animals on her bed that she can’t fit when it’s time to sleep. “It’s covered in them.”
The York students had no particular method of raising the money, Principal Christopher Black said. They simply asked each other, parents, family and members of the community for donations.
Their efforts brought results. The students raised enough money to donate bears to two hospitals – Levine and Novant Health Hemby children’s hospitals and also the Ronald McDonald House.
“It felt really great and rewarding … to see the smile on that girl’s face,” said Ozog, whose best friend Lilli Beard died in 2015 after a battle with cancer.
The students really do care about their initiative. They name the stuffed animals after people and animals who have left an impact, Black said. For example, Ozog named Sydney’s stuffed animal after Lilli’s dog Baxter, which gave her comfort while she was sick, Ozog said.
Abbey Baker, 17, said she named two of the stuffed animals after her grandmothers Noell and Nancy. “It’s a way to do something for them when they are going through a really hard time,” Baker said. It’s a small, but impactful gesture which helps kids in need. And it shows the big hearts of the students.
