Teens, group create cards, give toys to
ill youngsters
By DOUG
ROBERTSON
Published in the Asbury Park Press - 12/03/99
Preparation of some 100 greeting cards yesterday, filled with holiday
messages for sick children in area hospitals, was a lesson in citizenship
for 20 Lakewood High School students.
The teen-agers are members of Pupil Assisted Learning Services,
a class that offers credits for community service.
Working alongside disabled adult volunteers from Easter Seal Society of
Ocean County, the teens are helping a local charity raise the spirits of
sick children and their parents.
As part of a campaign, "Teddy Bear Time," the handmade cards will be
distributed with teddy bears to hospitalized children by the nonprofit
Empathy Foundation.
"Before we walk into a hospital room, there is not a smile within 50
miles. We give the child the teddy bear, and they light up like a
Christmas tree," said Tom Riles, who in 1996 founded the Empathy
Foundation with his wife, Andrea.
The group has handed out as many as 60 of the bears a day in visits to
Jersey Shore Medical Center, Neptune; Community Medical Center, Toms
River; Deborah Heart and Lung Center; St. Joseph's Hospital, Paterson; and
Columbia Medical Center, New York City.
But the Point Pleasant-based charity is running out of money, Riles
said.
"We have been told by the state and by the county that there is no
funding available for what we do. We do not receive any grants. Everything
we have done has come from our own pockets or money we have been able to
scrape together," he said, adding the group gave out $5,000 in 1999.
The foundation has bought a mother a two-month supply of a special
formula to help her infant gain weight following heart surgery. It has
paid to install a telephone line so a child can be monitored by doctors
after being released from the hospital.
It cannot continue these services unless its starts receiving steady
donations.
The foundation's goal is to give out $1,000 a week to needy parents of
hospitalized children, "and that does not even scratch the surface," he
said.
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