Hospital Doll Project
February 21, 2007

K-T District, First Lady Yvonne Porell is promoting a project “Hospital Dolls” to support Kiwanis International Motto “Serving the Children of the World” This project also supports one of the major club programs relating to the Young Children/Priority One.”

The hospital doll project is intended to provide simple muslin-stuffed dolls to children hospitalized for serious illnesses or surgery in children hospitals or local hospitals providing medical services to young children. The dolls provide a child-friendly communication tool for doctors and other health care personnel to explain to children the nature of their illnesses and the surgery procedures that will return the sick children to full recovery. Since the dolls are plain the child can inscribe facial features to the doll and have visitors autograph the dolls as a reminder of their hospital stay and of those who visited them while they were in the hospital.

Lester Wright, Chairperson of Young Children/ Priority One in the Bristol Kiwanis Club has coordinated three workshops to make the muslin dolls for Wellmont Regional Medical Centers in Bristol and Kingsport. Kiwanis members and spouses started with a goal to make 500 dolls and revised that goal to one thousand plus. To date one thousand twenty dolls have been constructed.

December 28, 2006, Lester Wright and Kiwanis members met with Terry Eades, Supervisor of Risk Management at Wellmont Bristol Regional Medical Center and Brenda Head, Supervisor of Pediatrics at Bristol Wellmont Regional Medical Center to deliver the first three hundred dolls. Later they visited with Marsha Helton, Supervisor of Pediatrics at Wellmont Holston Valley Medical Center in Kingsport leaving two hundred dolls. Recently they visited Johnson Memorial Hospital in Abingdon supplying 25 dolls since that hospital does not have a pediatrics ward and did not have a demanding need for this educational tool.

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