How Operation Teddy Bear Helps...

The Students

Operation Teddy Bear addresses these needs by providing our signature schoolbags, educational materials and wellness tools to every first grade student at select schools in our service area each year. The schoolbags contain such items as reading and coloring books, writing journals, crayons, STEAM-related items, toothbrushes, toothpaste, and of course, teddy bears!

The Teachers

The program also provides teachers with supplies, including items such as white board marker/eraser sets, tissues, pencils and glue sticks.

The Community

And that's not all. Our volunteers love taking the time to read an original story about “Teddy the volunteer” to the students, which facilitates a lesson about kindness, compassion, volunteering and identifying emotions, and uses the experience of receiving a gift as encouragement to "pay it forward." 

We also partner with GreenVetsLA and their nonprofit vocational rehabilitation program, Vets Corps USA, to produce the schoolbags locally, which provides job training for disabled, homeless and/or unemployed veterans.

This multi-faceted approach sets the students up for success and everyone wins!

Keeping Up with the Needs of the Students

Each year, we survey the teachers/principals and consult with an advisory group of local teachers to gather feedback on the program and how it fits the students' needs. The feedback also allows us to adapt the materials as the school experience changes and evolves. For example, teachers had been requesting more quality non-fiction reading books and writing journals with room to draw pictures to help the students to better meet the Common Core Curriculum Standards. We were able to grant those requests in recent years, and this past year, we added two new items based on feedback we received: an engineer construction kit that helps the students learn to build two- and three-dimensional shapes and a volunteer-made "rekenrek" to assist each first-grader with concepts of math and counting - and calm fidgety fingers!

We also make changes to the program based on the latest community needs. This past year, the schoolbag included wellness items such as writing prompts to help the students identify their feelings and a note attached to the teddy bear suggesting they give the bear a hug and take a deep breath when they're nervous or afraid (shown in the video below!). The in-class lesson also included how to identify emotions. These additions were incorporated to address the mental health crisis facing youth nationwide and further the goals of the Volunteer Center's focus on this issue locally, while all of the improvements provide the students with even better tools they need to succeed and allow them to practice what they learned in class at home.

Revealing the surprise with volunteers from Kinecta

Special teddy bear instructions with volunteers from the Port of LA

• Collect supplies
• Set up materials

• Pack schoolbags
• Deliver bags to schools

• Read to the children
• Provide administrative support