Getting on his hands and knees one man has been bear crawling through the mud to bring teddy bears to kids around the country.

Mark Haverland has been hosting his GoFundMe to do local and Spartan events to raise funds for local hospitals and recently has been doing half mile bear crawls to provide teddy bears for children in hospitals.

How it started

This all started last year according to Haverland, as he did one bear crawl for a hospital in Duluth.

“So, in 2023 I went, and I did a bear crawl, a Spartan bear crawl, where I bear crawled a 5k and a 10k. And I raised money to bring teddy bears to the St. Mary’s Children’s Hospital in Duluth.”

Since then, Mark has been working alongside Spartan to host half mile bear crawls, yoga, and other kinds of events to get teddy bears for children. They started the teddy bear crawl charity last year and are making that impact across the nation with the Teddy Bear Crawl Foundation.

“Last month though, since they don’t have Spartan events here on the range, we did an event at the anchor here in Hibbing where we did a yoga, sauna, cold plunge event. And that money that was raised at that event is what provided these teddy bears to the Hibbing Fairview Range Hospital.”

“After this delivery to date, we have donated 1,920 teddy bears to hospitals across the country.”

Bear crawling the Northland

These crawls have affected children all over the country, but Mark noticed not enough events were happening in the Northland.

“We’re looking into doing more events here locally as well. Try to hold more events and raise more money to bring teddy bears to the local hospitals because we are impacting hospitals across the nation. However, where I live doesn’t have these events happening so we want to definitely try to impact our local hospitals more.

“We’ll be holding more events with the hopefully yoga, sauna, cold plunging, other ways of raising money are coming up, other people are reaching out for other opportunities and that’s going to help these local hospitals.”

Looking back to look ahead

These events were sometimes just Haverland, but others welcomed many others to join in the activities. From families with children riding on their backs to others bear crawling right at his side, these events have been bringing people together to help get teddy bears for kids.

“I mean bear crawl for bears is what we originally called it, and it sounded good, but a teddy bear actually provides comfort to a child when they’re in an uncomfortable position, right? Child gets admitted into a hospital, that could be a scary place. Giving them something to hold onto and hold close to them is going to help bring comfort to them in that uncomfortable position.”

2024 Schedule

“My personal goal is I want a teddy bear into every child’s hand in every hospital across the nation and I want it to come from me. Now that’s a huge ask, but we’re slowly making that happen, right?

Right now, everything that they do is ran through GoFundMe as they work to become an official 501c3. For any questions, donations or to read about the teddy bear crawl. Mark can be contacted through his website.