MORE than 60,000 underprivileged children and elderly all over the country have received the “Bears of Joy” teddy bears since the project of mall giant SM began six years ago.
Elena Bautista Horn, SM’s vice president for Corporate Communications, said the Bears of Joy project has become a yearly tradition for some people.
“We are deeply honored that a lot of people have made giving the Bears of Joy a tradition that is part of their yearly shopping. This is certainly giving a gift of joy with a heart, because you not only get a teddy bear that we all love but you are giving another one to our less fortunate brothers and sisters,” Horn said in a press conference.
For the past six years, shoppers at SM Supermalls, through SM’s corporate social responsibility arm SM Cares and in partnership with Toy Kingdom, have been giving teddy bears to less privileged children and elderly through the project.
Anyone who wants to give teddy bears to indigent, orphaned, or abandoned children and elderly may go to any participating Toy Kingdom in SM malls and buy a pair of bears for P200. One bear goes to the customer and other bear is left for donation to beneficiaries.
Customers write down their name on the card attached to the bear, to make the donation more personal and heartwarming. They are also asked to write their names on a card to be placed on a display board in the selling venues so the donors are publicly acknowledged, Horn said.
The SM Bears of Joy will run until Dec. 25. The SM property will donate all collected toy bears to its chosen beneficiary, in the communities where they are present. The beneficiaries include public orphanages, child community centers, and related non-government organizations.
This year more SM subsidiaries and affiliates are participating in the project. Aside from the Toy Kingdom outlets in select SM Supermalls nationwide, the teddy bears may be purchased at Taal Vista Hotel, Pico Sands, Park Inn Clark, Radisson Cebu and Park Inn by Radisson in Davao.
SM Cares is the CSR arm of SM Prime Holdings, Inc. Its advocacies include programs on persons with disabilities, children and youth, women and breastfeeding mothers, environment sustainability, senior citizens, social entrepreneurship, and overseas Filipino workers. Macon Ramos-Araneta