Donated Midway plushies heading to Ukraine
It’s hard to imagine a midway game-winner wouldn’t want to take home their hard-earned plush prize, but some chose not to — and it’s helping orphaned children in Ukraine.
Plush toy donation bins sit at every Stampede exit, and users who don’t want the extra weight to carry home, don’t want the prize or simply want to make a difference in a young child’s life can leave the prize there for donation.
Humanitarian Aid Response Team, or HART, is a charity dedicated to alleviating poverty and injustice in Eastern Europe.
For almost a decade it has partnered with the Calgary Stampede to make a difference across the globe.
“They saw a need and we did, too, because a lot of them were going to the landfill or our garbage bins, so we had to figure out a way to donate them,” said James Radke, midway operations manager at the Calgary Stampede.
The two organizations began their partnership in 2008, and around 5,000 toys are donated each year.
Last year, 85 large garbage bags filled with plushies of all sizes were donated. Radke doesn’t have numbers for this year’s Stampede but said it will be in the thousands.
For many children in Ukraine, the stuffed toy will be a beacon of hope where there is little.
“The majority of children have to share everything they have with their siblings or children in their orphanages, but these stuffed toys is one thing each child will get to keep and call their own,” reads the HART website.
Radke said children are overjoyed when they receive the gift.
“We have had a lot of photos come back to us from (HART) and the children there have never seen anything like this,” Radke said. “They have a tendency to be overwhelmed when they get them.”
The toys can’t be donated to children’s hospitals because they have been handled and placed in bins — proving a danger to children with severe illnesses.
HART cleans them and sends them off when the summer ends.