The healing comfort of Trauma Teddies
How Australian Red Cross Trauma Teddy knitting workshops are helping immigrant communities to connect, collaborate and find joy.
Australian Red Cross Trauma Teddy workshop facilitator Lupe shows Marisol how to join sections of a Trauma Teddy together. Photo: Supplied
When Marisol first heard about an Australian Red Cross Trauma Teddy knitting workshop for the El Salvadorian community in Sydney, she wasn’t sure if she should attend. “But my mother, she loved to do anything craft. Anything to do by hand, she used to love it,” says Marisol. “Unfortunately, she passed away a couple of years ago. So when I saw this, I thought, ‘you know what? You can put my name down. I’m coming’.”
When she arrived at the workshop, she was surprised to see so many people from her community – some she knew, many she didn’t – gathered around the tables, learning how to create the beloved teddies Australian Red Cross volunteers knit by hand, to be given to children in need – from refugees to children in hospital and those who’ve lost their homes to disaster.
“So many people showed up,” says Marisol, who moved from her hometown of Sonsonate, El Salvador, to Sydney with her parents in 1991, when she was 17. “The ladies taught me how to join the two parts of the teddy [together], and I realised I enjoyed doing that.
“I’ve been going through a lot with my mum’s loss, a bit of depression, but I find this helps to keep my mind busy, when I’m sewing. And I thought that since my mum used to like doing these things so much, why not do it for a good cause?”
While our army of volunteer knitters meet up regularly in locations across the country, the Trauma Teddy knitting workshop Marisol attended, which was designed for Sydney’s Salvadoran community, was the first of its kind.
It came to fruition following a presentation Australian Red Cross Community Mobilisation Officer Maria Muente, NSW/ACT Community & Business Operations Manager Danielle Sweetman and ACT Director Jessi Claudianos gave to leaders of Australia’s Latin American community at Red Cross House in Canberra in late 2024; in attendance was Mr. Ernesto Antonio Dueñas Azucena, the Ambassador of El Salvador to Australia, who was especially interested in how a communal knitting workshop could help to bring members of the Salvadoran diaspora together.
Not long after, a June 2025 date for the pilot workshop was announced, and invitations were sent out to various members of the community, with the Honorary Consul to El Salvador in Sydney, Mr. Jose Enrique Vasquez Rivas, also set to attend.
“It was an opportunity for us to bring members of our community together around something good; for them to have some time to do something different, maybe learn a new skill, while participating in a project that’s part of the wider community,” says Mr. Rivas. “When many Salvadorans came [to Australia] in the 1980s – they left a country that was experiencing a civil war. A lot of them lost family members, friends, or they might have been victims in some ways... and many still carry that pain and trauma.
“This project provided them with an opportunity to get together, chat, share some of the good things and bad things.”
Like Marisol, Sara came to Australia under the Special Humanitarian Program, which helped to resettle people who had experienced serious discrimination or human rights abuses during the Salvadoran Civil War in the ’80s and ’90s. Sara also attended the Trauma Teddy knitting workshop for the Salvadoran community in June.
“Whenever I am knitting a Trauma Teddy, I feel my heart is supporting someone else – someone that needs that happiness,” she says. “I forget about problems, I’m concentrating on what I’m doing, and I put my heart [into it] because I know these Trauma Teddies go to kids in need.”
In 2025, Australian Red Cross celebrated 35 years of knitting Trauma Teddies, which are given to children in need. Throughout this time, over one million children have held a colourful, cuddly Trauma Teddy - November 23 is National Trauma Teddy Day, marking a moment to celebrate the joy and comfort these smiling bears have brought to children across Australia and overseas.
But as the pilot workshop for the El Salvadoran community displays, Trauma Teddies don’t only give happiness to those who receive them – they provide a sense of purpose and connection to the people putting them together.
Since attending the first workshop, both Sara and Marisol have continued to participate in Sydney’s regular Trauma Teddy knitting groups. Following the success of the pilot program, workshops have been held for members of the Costa Rican, Peruvian, and Ecuadorian communities in Sydney, with children, parents, and grandparents in attendance.
“When I had my first conversation with the Ambassador for Peru, I asked him what his major concerns were, and he told me it was depression and loneliness in adult immigrants,” says Australian Red Cross Community Mobilisation Officer Maria Muente, who was instrumental in bringing the workshop together. “Because young immigrants bring their parents into Australia, and without the language and the connection, they are suffering.
“Trauma Teddy workshops can be therapy for them to connect and stay engaged with us and their community,” adds Maria.
“It helps me because it’s a way to cure my heart when it’s under depression,” says Sara of knitting the teddies. “I’m very happy that I’ve found Australian Red Cross because it’s helping me. And it makes me feel very happy because I’m helping more people in need.”
For more information or to locate your local Trauma Teddy coordinator, contact us.
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