What started as a way for Animals Asia’s global teams to show solidarity with their friends and colleagues in China during the CoVid19 coronavirus crisis has become a worldwide social media outpouring. There have been #BearInTheWindow posts appearing from all the corners of the globe from Japan to Scotland, from Italy to Vietnam and the tributes show no sign of stopping.

To participate all you have to do is place a toy bear in your window, take a photo and post it publicly to your social media with the hashtag #BearInTheWindow as a message of unity with our brave bear team and the people of China and everyone else who has been impacted by this outbreak.

While embassies were advising foreign nationals to leave China because of the CoVid19 coronavirus outbreak, members of our brave teams were putting on masks and heading to our bear rescue centre in Chengdu and bear rescue site in Nanning. On the way they witnessed empty streets and closed shops during what should have been the festive Chinese New Year celebrations.

Our local teams were also making tough sacrifices to come to work and look after the precious bears and other animals cared for in Chengdu and Nanning. Travel to work meant several stops at health checkpoints where local villagers took it upon themselves to temperature check people coming and going. Some routes were closed, turning a two hour trip into a ten hour detour.

Jill Robinson, Animals Asia’s Founder and CEO said:

“This morning amongst all the worry for our team in China, who are facing their biggest challenge ever because of the coronavirus outbreak, I found the most wonderful string of support messages coming in for the China Team from their Animals Asia family all around the world. Apart from helping out in so many practical ways, they each wanted to send a personal gesture to let their colleagues in China know that they are never far from their thoughts.”

The response from the teams in China has been quite emotional.

Katherine Alexander the Vet Nurse at the Chengdu Bear Rescue Centre said:

“This is lovely. Every day we watch over the bears and to think that not just our bears, but bears all around the world are watching over us nearly made me cry. Thanks everyone for your support. We could not do our job here at CBRC without it, so thank you.”

Currently our teams are having to take emergency measures to prepare for this crisis to last an unpredictable amount of time. This means stockpiling food and certain medicines for the bears which are becoming more difficult to source and increasing in price. The team is also making sure that they can operate heightened biosecurity measures which means sourcing increasingly hard-to-come by facemasks and disinfectants.

Animals Asia supporters from all over the world have shown such love for these bears and the teams that are caring for them under these difficult circumstances.

Support has come from Taiwan:

 Australia: 

Japan:

 Scotland:

England:

Italy:

 Tasmania:

And Vietnam

Every #BearInTheWindow is a hugely appreciated symbol of support for the amazing work our bear teams do day in and day out, crisis or no crisis. Animals Asia is immensely grateful for all of your kindness and compassion and sends an extra special thank you to everyone who has donated to our #CrisisActionFund.

Animals Asia stands strong with all of the resilient people of China including members of our brave staff who are working under very difficult conditions to look after our beautiful moon bears. We hope this crisis will soon pass, and until it does hundreds of bears are watching out for our brave bear teams who are truly living the values of compassion and kindness in action.  

 

BACK