Support and comfort to children during COVID-19 and social distancing

Author: Kay Jones

For more than a decade, Gallagher Bassett’s (GB) Gentle Bear has been a symbol of caring and compassion. Gentle Bear helps emergency service organizations around the world lend support and comfort to children or anyone who might need a friend or just a hug to get through the adversity of a challenging time. In the current environment, the GB Gentle Bear is not allowed to give hugs, and must also practice social distancing just like everyone else. So, how can Gentle Bear still spread the message of caring and compassion in a “no hugs allowed” world?

GB is proud to offer “Gentle Bear’s Big Hibernation,” a free digital PDF storybook for families to read together to help teachers and parents explain the concept of the COVID-19 quarantine, as well as learning and working from home. It’s not the same as a real hug from a Gentle Bear, but we hope this story can provide a virtual hug to families as we all better understand our own “big hibernation” of this crisis through the experience Gentle Bear and his Aunt Jenny Gentle are having while working and learning from their cave.

We invite you to download the PDF of Gentle's Bear's Big Hibernation, and encourage you to share this with your nonprofit teams, parishioners, religious education classes, family, friends, clients, partners or anyone you think needs some caring and comfort while still working and learning from home.


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