2025-26 State Project: Operation Battle Buddy
Sending photo-holding dolls to first responder and active duty famlies
Danika Bendickson, State President 2025-26
Every year the Washington State Children of the American Revolution (C.A.R.) has a patriotic state project fundraiser. This year we are raising money by kids for kids. Our patriotic fundraiser is Operation Battle Buddy!
Operation Give a Hug was a successful national non-profit program that started in Washington State giving personalized photo-holding dolls to deployed families to help cope with being apart. In 2009 my mother reached out to the operation to get a free Huggee doll for my 1-year-old (at the time) brother. Operation Give a Hug responded and gave us one of the free huggee photo-holding dolls. This helped my brother a lot even though he was too young to remember. To be honest, it helped my mom a lot too. In 2017 Operation Give a Hug was closed due to federal funding issues. This was a letdown to my whole family who had been touched by how this program had helped our family.
The Washington State CAR is raising money NOW to get Operation Give a Hug restarted (now renamed Operation Battle Buddy). I hope to raise approximately $28,000 in donated funds so 1776 children of active-duty military and civilian first responders under 18 can get a free Huggee doll. Audrey Storch the owner and creator of Give a Hugg and has agreed to pay for ALL shipping and continue at very low retail prices!
Even though we are not in an active deployment right now, studies show that active-duty military soldiers spend about 45% of their time away from family. Even if they are not deployed, they are still gone and still missed. According to a Blue Star Family poll done in 2019, 95% of military families worry about time away and the stability of their family.
Not just active-duty military but as a daughter of a Seattle Police officer I also know what stress it is on my family especially during times of challenge and separation and there are special photo pocket police dolls! This would have helped me cope better with my father’s long night shifts and mandatory overtime protecting Seattle.
We are working with the Operation Give a Hug nonprofit groups aUSA, local family readiness and local first responders, and the Huggee dolls have been vetted through the Operation Give a Hug and Tunnel to Towers Foundation that C.A.R. has worked with.
These Huggee soft photo dolls are amazing; they are hypo-allergenic, spot cleanable, color fast, safe for all ages and machine washable!! They have a clear soft pocket to put a photo of their loved one in and change it out when they like! When we have a request for dolls filled, I will personally give them out to the kids in need around WA state.
We are going to give one doll to each child who is eligible. Unfortunately, the dolls are not guaranteed, but we will raise as much as we can and when we get an order full, we will organize an event to give the dolls out to those on the list.