Toy Drive for East Tennessee Children’s Hospital

For the second year, BenchMark Physical Therapy is partnering with an 11-year-old patient to host a kids’ toy fundraising drive for the patients at East Tennessee Children’s Hospital.

In 2014, Emilie hosted a teddy bear drive by herself and collected over 900 bears. In 2015, BenchMark and Emily teamed up to collect over 1,000 bears. This year, we will continue to collect bears, as well as new board games and card games.

The hospital’s largest current need are board games and card games. To protect patients from the possible spread of germs, these items are not shared, because the cardboard or paper materials cannot be thoroughly disinfected. The most requested card games are Uno, Skip Bow and Phase 10. Great board games include Candyland, HiHo Cherry-o, Chutes and Ladders, Operation, Sorry, Monopoly and memory matching board games. We request that teddy bears be new and standard sized.

To donate, please bring the new items to any of the 16 BenchMark Physical Therapy clinics throughout Knoxville and the surrounding areas. Financial donations will also be accepted and will be used to purchase more teddy bears. The drive will continue through December 22, 2016.

Fifth-grader Emilie Gregg suffers from several uncommon diseases, including a rare blood disorder, Hypoplasminogenemia, Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, Neurofibromatosis, epilepsy and a genetic cardiac disease. Emilie has been receiving treatments at Children’s Hospital in Knoxville for the past seven years.