Small Squishy Toys, Big Warmth: Multiple Regions Use Creative Forms to Empower Public Welfare and Growth with Toys
Recently, public welfare, educational and cultural communication activities featuring squishy toys have been carried out in Shanghai, Shanxi, Anhui and other places. This common soft rubber toy is combined with intangible cultural heritage inheritance, gratitude and respect, and safety education, allowing the small toy to break out of the single label of "stress-relief tool" and become an important carrier for conveying warmth and promoting growth. Relevant activities have been widely praised by the public.
In Changning District, Shanghai, the Changning Culture and Art Center, together with a volunteer team, launched a public welfare activity entitled "Knead a Blessing Knot to Welcome the New Year: Squishy Stress-Relief Toy DIY", innovatively integrating the intangible cultural heritage of Chinese knot culture with the production of silicone squishy toys. At the event, parent-child families participated in glue mixing, color matching, demoulding and other links together, making Chinese knot-shaped squishy toys by hand and experiencing the charm of intangible cultural heritage through practical operation. Many parents said that they are usually busy with work and rarely have the opportunity to participate in manual activities with their children. Such public welfare activities not only relieve stress and heal the mind, but also allow children to understand traditional intangible cultural heritage and enhance parent-child relationships. The community person in charge introduced that this activity takes handcraft as a link, further connects the feelings of neighbors, and adds a strong New Year flavor and warm atmosphere for the Spring Festival.
At Jinzhong University of Information in Shanxi, during the International Nurses' Day, students from Class 2301 of Marketing spontaneously organized a public welfare activity to express gratitude to medical workers. It took the students 20 days to hand-make cute squishy toys in the shapes of cat paws and desserts using food-grade safe silicone, which were specially delivered to the medical staff of the university hospital, sending a soft healing force to the angels in white who are in a high-pressure working state for a long time. It is understood that through classroom research, the students found that medical workers are under great work pressure, so they decided to express their respect through handcrafting, and convey their gratitude and care to medical workers with small squishy toys, creating a warm and touching atmosphere on the scene.
In Yinhu Community, Wanli Street, Jiujiang District, Wuhu, Anhui, squishy toys have become a "little helper" for children's safety education. Community volunteers organized children in the area to carry out hand-made squishy toy activities. The children made their own squishy toys with cotton and environmental protection clay. During the activity, the volunteers explained safety knowledge to the children in combination with the characteristics of the toys, focusing on reminding them to stay away from dangerous toys with peculiar smell, easy-to-fall-off small parts and sharp accessories, and guiding the children to establish a correct awareness of toy purchase and use. This activity combines emotional decompression, handcraft creation and safety education, allowing children to learn safety knowledge in a relaxed and pleasant atmosphere and build a solid line of defense for growth.
From the inheritance of intangible cultural heritage to gratitude and respect, from parent-child interaction to safety education, small squishy toys are exerting positive value in various forms. These activities not only enrich the people's spiritual and cultural life, convey warmth and kindness, but also endow this common toy with a deeper meaning, becoming a warm link connecting culture, public welfare and growth.
