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Several teachers from Iowa were out shopping when they came upon one of the families from their school: a single mom with her third grade son and second grade daughter. This family was homeless, and was living in an alley, behind a building, and had nothing more than newspapers to cover themselves up with. The teachers went over to offer help, and one of the teachers asked both of the kids what they wanted ‘right at that moment, more than anything in the world’ to try and lift their spirits; to make them feel a little better.
The little girl, at eight years old, looked up and said the thing she wanted more than anything in the world was ‘a little stuffed animal’. That is how the story of Eric came to be. In Sheltered Reality, we have a stuffed monkey, named Eric, that is used to help us tell this story to all of our audiences. Over time, the story became a project, called Project Eric, where all kinds of people: kids and adults, collect stuffed animals to give to children in homeless shelters.
The story of the little girl who wanted her own stuffed animal so badly is attached to each animal to assure that all homeless children receiving the animals from SR find that (a) they can have a stuffed animal to hang onto when they feel sad, something the little girl in the alley did not have, and (b) that other people, especially other children, care enough about their plight to complete Project Eric on their behalf.
Click here for the Project Eric brochure.
(The documents on this page are in .pdf format. You will need Adobe Reader installed on your computer to view them.)
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