Service Project

One of the many projects that I have been trying to complete this year is the service project that I started at the beginning of the year for the W Family Reunion. My goal was to get 30 medical dolls with gowns made for the church's Humanitarian Center. These are just plain white or cream colored dolls with hospital gowns that are given to children in the hospital to help comfort them and the medical staff uses the doll to show the child what will be done to them, i.e. cast, stitches, I.V., etc. I got the idea from a stake Relief Society service day.

So, the original plan was that I would sew all of the gowns and other members of the family would sew the dolls and bring them to the family reunion so that we could stuff them, stitch them up, and put the gowns on them. I also made 5 dolls to stuff because I had the sinking suspicion that there were only going to be a few people that would actually do the project. I knew of 3 people that were making 5 each and was hopeful that a few more would "surprise" me. I made 25 gowns because I knew that I would have at least 20 dolls.

When the family reunion came around, I was pleased to see that we had 24 dolls, not 20, but we had 34 gowns thanks to Aunt D who made gowns for the dolls that she & Shannon made. We were able to quickly finish the dolls with the help of many young 3rd generations and the project turned out to be pretty fun for all ages. The problem came when the kids realized that they weren't able to keep a doll... :)

So when I got home, I made the decision that I would make 10 more dolls so that we had an equal number of dolls and gowns. I actually finished cutting them out and sewing them rather quickly, but I decided to see if the Young Women were interested in stuffing and sewing them up for an activity (since I am now working in the YW organization). So the dolls sat around my house for a month or two. Just when I had decided to finish them myself, the YW presidency asked me to bring them for the YW to work on when another activity fell through. Well, we got them all stuffed, but not many of the YW wanted to sew them up so they sat around my house again waiting to be sewn. One Saturday I finally got them out and M&M & Lukee helped me sew up the legs on the dolls.

Then this last Friday I decided to take all of the kids with me to finally deliver them to the Primary Children's Hospital in Salt Lake. I definitely wanted them delivered by Christmas time. So we took a trip downtown and took 2 big trash bags full of the dolls. When I called the hospital to find out where to deliver them to, the lady on the phone sounded excited about the dolls. Unfortunately, when we got to the hospital, no one was at the drop-off desk and there were numerous other donations there as well (this is definitely the time for giving), but I think it was a good experience for the kids. We talked about why we had made the dolls and what they were going to be used for.

We actually turned the project into a service project for M&M for school since she did a lot of work on it with me. She helped cut out a lot of the dolls & gowns and helped to turn them right-side-out and stuff them. This will count towards one of her goals for the 3rd grade for an award at the end of the school year.

I would like to thank everyone that helped out with the project: Mom N, sister-in-law V, Aunt D & Shannon for making dolls (and some gowns), Mom S for donating cute boy fabric (I had plenty of girl fabric from sewing Easter dresses for my girls), my sister M for helping cut out gowns, the W family & YW in my ward for stuffing the dolls, M&M for cutting, stuffing & sewing & Luke for stuffing & sewing. It was a lot of work, but I hope that they will be appreciated by kids who need them.

As a side note, I have an aunt that works at the Humanitarian Center and when my parents were here in August, she took us on a tour of the center. We mentioned that I had a lot of surgery dolls to donate and she suggested that I take them directly to the Primary Children's Hospital. Apparently, even though I got the pattern for the doll and gown on the Humanitarian's website, they keep getting donations of the dolls and don't know what to do with them. So, the workers at the center put faces on the dolls and send them out to orphanages around the world. My aunt said that they have no agreements with any of the hospitals in the area to give the dolls to them & she wasn't sure why the pattern was on the website. That's why we ended up taking them to the children's hospital instead of the humanitarian center.