Hello everyone, it's been two months since I last blogged.
If you are wondering why I was gone for so long,
This post will explain it.
But on to the actual post!
For those who didn't know, I have been working on a project for children who lost everything they owned due to a natural disaster, be it flooding, a hurricane, a tornado, etc. I intend to visit the areas where the natural disasters occurred and give children customized dolls that I have made. I am planning a second project as well, that involves making dolls for children in hospitals.
For both projects, I intend to give customized dolls to people once the current COVID-19 quarantine is over. Some of these dolls will have their face repainted and their hair re-wigged with yarn. Like my previous doll customizations, however, the hair re-wigging will only happen when the child wants it (since you can't really brush it after re-wigging). I feel even more deeply connected to doing both of these projects, as I have had a surgery and live in an area where a tornado recently hit.
What I intend to do for the Natural Disasters Project:
1. Visit hospitals (this will also cross into my other doll project for children in hospitals).
2. Visit areas that have been damaged and/or destroyed by disasters.
3. Send dolls to people who need them, even if I cannot visit them.
So far for this project I've finished brushing the hair of and making clothes for about twelve or thirteen dolls. I intend to bring them to hospitals for those who have been affected by a natural disaster, given that some natural disasters have injured people enough that they need to go to the hospital. And I hope to visit those in my area, who have lost their home.
And for the Hospitals project:
1. I intend to talk directly to children in hospitals, and ask them what type of doll they want.
2. Go on visits and give dolls to people.
3. Perhaps get a group of people to customize dolls with me. (This will probably apply to both projects).
For this project, when focusing on the doll customizing portion, I hope that I will be able to talk to the child about what type of doll they want before making it. If they want a character from a movie, a book, or a TV show, I will customize a doll for them to be that character. I even intend to create dolls of characters they made up themselves.
For the natural disaster project, I will bring pre-customized dolls in for people. Hopefully, I will eventually get to talk to talk to people about what kind of dolls they want beforehand. But I'm not sure how much time I will have to do that before I actually go to those places or if the people who were affected by the disaster would exactly want to talk that much to me. But even so, I will bring custom dolls of course.
For both of them:
As well as giving dolls to people in hospitals, and to those who suffered natural disasters, I hope to teach people who want to learn how to clean up and customize thrift store dolls. I know for some going to the thrift store to find dolls that are not completely perfect must be disappointing.
So, I hope that knowing that they can be fixed, will help them.
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What have you done to help your community? I would love to hear your stories in the comments.
That's all for now. When I have more updates on this, I will post them.
-Quinley
