Bears & Books: A Nonprofit for UPMC Children's Hospital

Hello! My name is Robert Lule and I'm currently a Premed student at Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania hoping to someday become a Pediatric Hematologist/Oncologist. However, I don't plan on waiting around until then to start trying to make the lives of these kids battling terminal illnesses better, and doing what I can to help struggling families in the Pittsburgh area as a whole.

I'm starting a nonprofit partnered with UPMC Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh’s Child life program. This half of the nonprofit will be focused on asking community members to donate monetarily to this gofundme that seeks to purchase items from a registry curated by Child Life services. The items on the registry are items directly asked for by patients and parents. Items purchased include crayons, toys, notebooks, headphones, etc. 

The second focus of Bears & Books will be toy donations. We will utilize designated drop off sites such as Butler Hospital that will have bins where anyone can donate toys, comfort items, books, etc. they may no longer need/want. These items will then be delivered by volunteers to UPMC Children's Family Care Connection centers, which are part of the Allegheny County Family Support network. FCC will take care of distributing these items throughout communities and hospitals that need them, along with making sure everything is in safe quality and condition.

For now it will be small in scale but I have long term plans for this, with ideas such as distributing funding (sponsors, grants, etc.) to low income families unable to afford the healthcare equipment that seeks to ease quality of life for them and their child, field trips for kids in which they have a chance to do activities outside of the hospital and in the city, among other things!

This gofundme is allocating all proceeds directly to the Child Life Department/long-term costs of managing such a nonprofit. It goes without saying that any and all donations are greatly appreciated but if you can't afford to, share this gofundme with friends and family, the more eyes the better.

And above all thank you!!