Comfort doll production team busy in their workshop
Vicki Baker
The Kiwanis Club’s Comfort Dolls project started around 2011 to comfort children in traumatic situations who are experiencing illness, injury or emotional stress. The children are given a “doll” to hold onto to help them feel more comfortable while undergoing evaluations and treatments. Not only do the dolls provide security, they also offer doctors and nurses a way to explain medical treatments to their pediatric patients. Once the children are released they keep the dolls. If they need to return to the hospital they have “someone” who has been there with them before right by their side.
The dolls, called “comfort” dolls, are simple, colorful, sewn cloth figures stuffed with cotton-like synthetic fiber, which feels like a soft pillow. They come in a variety of shapes including people, bears, monkeys and donkeys, and for Valentine’s Day, hearts. Each doll has its own charming personality inspired by the fabric used to make it.
Members from KCRR gather for about two hours on the third Wednesday of each month at 1:00 p.m. The Bluebonnet Room of the CATC serves as their workshop. Before the dolls get delivered to the hospitals they are cut out from bolts of cloth, sewn, stuffed and faces hand drawn. Once completed the dolls are donated to Denton area hospitals.
The project’s goal is to make a minimum of 20 dolls per month. KCRR anticipates the comfort doll project to expand as the needs of children continue to grow. There are many other organizations in the Denton community that could use these dolls. However, it’s a matter of adding more volunteers to increase doll production.
During the upcoming months the dolls will take the form of shamrocks, bunnies and Easter eggs. Interested in helping with this project or many others? Come join the Kiwanis Club Robson Ranch every first and third Friday at 8:30 a.m. in the Clubhouse. For more information contact Jim Galbraith at [email protected].