Duduza Dolls Comfort Sick Children
Children Affected by HIV/AIDS (CHABHA) Projects Deliver Hope
Jan 24, 2008
The inspiration of two Vermont women, Susanna Grannis and Belinda Whipple Worth has helped fill physical and emotional voids in the lives of AIDS-affected children in sub-Saharan Africa.
After noticing a bin of knitted dolls with dark faces at a local yarn shop, Belinda asked the shop’s proprietor about them. That is how the friends learned about “Duduza Dolls”-- “Duduza” is a Zulu word for “comfort”—and about their connection to Children in Distress Network (CINDI), the South African networking social service clearinghouse whose mission dovetailed with that of their own organization, Children Affected by HIV/AIDS in Africa (CHABHA), which Susanna founded in 2003.
It just so happened that Susanna and Belinda had visitedCINDI a few months earlier, and found an efficient organization that provided an impressive amount of help for the children it serves.
CINDI, a large network of volunteer and government agencies founded 1996, implements successful programs for HIV/AIDS-affected children. CINDI’s website provided the yarn shop with the pattern for the dolls, a standard pattern for experienced knitters as well as a simpler one for younger (or less confident) ones.
Duduza Doll-making provides an opportunity to teach children to knit while educating them about making a difference in the world.
CINDI’s 150-plus members in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa strive to encourage a spirit of Ubuntu (“humanity toward others”) and maximize opportunities for efficient use of resources for children affected by the AIDS pandemic. Duduza Dolls are one of many projects under its auspices.
The epiphany the women experienced in the shop propelled Belinda to knit the dolls herself, teach others, and share the pattern at CHABHA presentations inspiring others in Vermont, Massachusetts, and Florida to do the same. The dolls-making helped catalyze support for CHABHA’s principal projects which provide monies to subsidize the children’s schooling and medical care.
Meanwhile, Susanna had planned a trip to Africa in December of 2006 and 215 Duduza Dolls would accompany her to Rwanda.
Hopeful that she had brought enough to distribute among the younger children, Susanna quickly learned that every one of the more-than-1000 children wanted one, regardless of age or gender. The bittersweet image of a fifteen-year-old boy hugging one of these dolls demonstrated these children’s desperate need for comfort.
Due to this scarcity, she (with Belinda) resolved to fill the need by sharing, through CHABHA, this unique opportunity to reach out to others back home.
The Vermont-based CHABHA exemplifies a small organization that supports both hearts and bodies. By raising consciousness about HIV/AIDS’s impact on every aspect of these children’s lives, CHABHA’s grassroots projects help ease the suffering of the illness that not only causes the loss of their parents, it is now simply a part of life.
CHABHA mainly focuses on educating and raising funds. The dolls are a small part of their work but have been a great catalyst for making people aware of the crisis. CHABHA sponsors several other programs —four in Rwanda and one in South Africa and accepts monetary donations of any size. Occasionally, they sell dolls in the U.S to raise funds to help fill the children’s most urgent needs for schooling, psycho-social support, health care, and emergency food.
CHABHA’s efforts have brought nearly 1000 dolls to Rwanda, and in October, 2007, 300 more made the journey to South Africa. However, due to the overwhelming response to their call for dolls, CHABHA requests that people mail their homemade Duduza Dolls directly to CINDI at one of the following addresses:
Diocese of the Highveld, c/o Lynn Coull, P.O. Box 17642, Benoni West, 1503, South Africa
or CINDI, P.O. Box 157, Pietermaritzburg, 3200, South Africa
Write “KNITTED DOLLS, NO COMMERCIAL VALUE,” on the package to avoid customs and duty charges.
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