FEBRUARY 2 • 2023 | 29

material, design and even choking hazards, 
such as stuffed animals with buttons that 
wouldn’t be right for the youngest age group.
Still, the process wasn’t always easy. After 
the students settled on which teddy bears 
they wanted to include in the care back-
packs, the teddy bears arrived much smaller 
than expected.
“The kids were disappointed,
” Wilson 
says. “But they went back online, and they 
found that they had to pay attention to the 
size of the bear. It encouraged them to think 
more deeply.
”
Finally, with the right items secured, 
the eighth-grade Tikkun Olam class had 
their final assortment of items for the care 

backpacks, which ended up costing $75 per 
backpack.
Depending on the age group, care back-
packs included brightly colored blankets, 
stuffed animals, bracelets that said things 
like “hope,
” “brave” and “strong,
” age-appro-
priate books about cancer and games like 
Go Fish.

LONG-LASTING IMPACT
It was a project, Wilson says, that the stu-
dents were extraordinarily passionate about. 
Although the class met for its final week at 
the time that this article was written, they 
presented their finished care backpacks to 
Hillel’s leadership team.

The goal: to work with leadership on next 
steps for the project and even potentially 
turn it into a legacy project that could one 
day become a regular school-wide effort.
“These kids are going to be gone next 
year,
” Wilson says. “They won’t be at Hillel 
because they’re eighth-graders and they’re 
going to graduate.
”
Now, before the eighth-graders graduate, 
Wilson says the class is working on identify-
ing a hospital where the care backpacks can 
be donated.
“They’re already thinking ahead,
” she 
says of the students. “We’re hoping that next 
month we will have identified a hospital 
that’s willing to partner with us. And the 
kids really want to hand-deliver the back-
packs.
”
It was also important to the students to 
find a hospital partner that can benefit from 
these backpacks, rather than a hospital that 
already has a lot of donations for pediatric 
cancer patients. “We want them to go to the 
place where they’re needed,
” Wilsons says.
While the new incoming Tikkun Olam 
class may settle on an entirely different 
project and route for their elective, Wilson 
believes the impact that this group had will 
be long-lasting and felt for years to come.
“You could see how empowered they 
were, how their eyes just lit up,
” she says of 
the students. “To know that something so 
simple as a school project could change the 
world for the better. It’s just so much more 
than I thought it was going to be.
” 

Tikkun Olam students assemble 
the backpacks.

