Due to an outreach from the Orlando Police Department, the Lake Nona Lunch Rotary Club is calling all teddy bears for donations. Officers hand out the bears when they are on duty to act as a gesture of comfort in a situation.
Local Rotarian Deanna Roberts earned the name Mama Bear as she took on the project once it was brought to Rotary’s attention. After the Pulse shooting in 2016, the police experienced a dry spell in the number of bears they had since the incident had exhausted their supply. A speaker from the Orlando Police office came to one of the Rotary meetings and asked for their help to collect bears from the community. Roberts immediately jumped on the task due to her thirst for helping others.
“I’ve always been someone who believes in giving back – it’s just part of who I am,” says Deanna. Her parents were that way, therefore she was raised that way. After being employed with Disney for 27 years, she took up real estate. However, at the same time, she needed to tend to her parents as a full-time caregiver. To help connect her to the community again, she became a Mary Kay sales associate. The experiences connected her with the people around her, and she was able to serve clients and take care of her parents at the same time.
As for Rotary, Deanna was able to generate about 300 teddy bears from the public to give to the police department. The bears are seen as especially useful in domestic incidents where the cops are involved. For a child, it can be a bit intimidating seeing a police officer called to their home. However, after giving the child a stuffed animal, the child’s tensions are broken and it helps take the edge out of the situation for them.
Anyone can donate teddy bears to Rotary by coming to the meetings at the Ronald McDonald House on the second Tuesday of every month at noon. Deanna asks that the bears appear good as new. She also says that smaller bears work better than huge ones. Not only do the smaller bears fit better in a police car, but the normal-sized toys are more inviting to the child’s eye regarding the situation they may be in.
The Rotary Club is an international organization that is built off of bettering humanity as a whole through community service and projects. Deanna has been a member for a little over a year now. She says that if she can give back to the community in any way, she will do it in a heartbeat.
