Tulsa CASA volunteers donate over 2,400 Squishmallows to comfort children in court

A Tulsa nonprofit’s Squishmallow fundraiser is helping bring comfort to children testifying in court, offering soft support during some of the most intimidating moments of their young lives.

Bringing Comfort to the Courtroom

Landes Bauter, Tulsa County Assistant Public Defender, works closely with children involved in the legal system, often representing them during some of the most challenging moments of their lives.

To help, children can pick out a stuffed animal to provide comfort while testifying. Bauter emphasizes the importance of trauma-informed care when working with children in the court system.

“Coming into court is scary,” Bauter said. “It is undeniably. I have been doing this for a year now and it can be intimidating, and you can only imagine how intimidating that can be for a kid, so having those comfort items we can give them when they come into court, it helps that process just a little bit more. Anything we can do to make it easier on the children, we are going to try to do."

Tulsa CASA and the Power of Community

Tulsa CASA, also known as Court Appointed Special Advocates, organized 'MarchMallow Madness', a fundraiser to collect 850 Squishmallows to distribute to the Juvenile Justice Center.

Elizabeth Fisher, Executive Director of Tulsa CASA, and other volunteers collected three times their original goal from the public.

“We blew that out of the water,” Fisher said. “We ended up getting 2,422.”

The plush toys were delivered to the courtrooms, where volunteers unpacked bag after bag of these stuffed animals.

An Invaluable Partnership

Bauter says the collaboration with CASA is essential to their mission.

“CASA does amazing work for our kids and this is just a small piece of that larger incredible mission that they have coming to assist our kids in this way,” Bauter said.

Fisher agrees, crediting the outpouring of support from the community.

"It's really beautiful to see the community come out in force to provide these comfort items for the kids,” Bauter said.

Growing The Mission

Beyond Squishmallows, the fundraiser has had a lasting effect. Tulsa CASA has seen an influx of people sign up to become volunteers.

“We have our largest training class since 2020 this month,” Fisher said. “We have twelve people in training and we super excited to get them started."

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