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Meagan's Nightingale
Dolls
Meagan Hilmo created her own service organization,
Nightingale Dolls, last year when she was twelve
years old. She had completed a master project
on Florence Nightingale in her seventh grade class at
American Heritage School and was so moved by the compassion
shown throughout the life of that great woman.
Specifically, Meagan was touched by a story of when
Florence Nightingale saw a terribly sick and lonely
child in one of the hospitals she visited. Florence
Nightingale did not have much to give, but she pulled
her handkerchief from her pocket and fashioned a little
doll for the sick child. She was a woman of great
charity who touched the lives of so many.
After months of study on this historical woman, Meagan
approached her parents and asked if she could make cloth
dolls for children in hospitals and shelters.
She had a sincere desire to honor her study of Florence
Nightingale by serving children in distress. Her
parents agreed to help her get started and Meagan went
online to research doll patterns. Eventually,
she settled on a simple pancake doll pattern that would
be easy for adults and children to sew. She got
a fantastic idea to leave the faces of the dolls (both
boy and girl dolls) blank and allow the children to
draw on their own face with a washable marker.
Meagan wrote the following poem that is tied to the
arm of each doll with the washable marker.
A doll for you from a secret place
Take the marker and draw a face
Happy, sad, whatever you feel
Then wash it – change it – as you heal.
With love from
A child who cares
She set a goal to create 1,000 Nightingale Dolls by the
time she graduates High School. Meagan realized
that it would take some resources to make 1,000 dolls
and so solicited the help of Zions Bank through their
Smart Women Smart Money Grant in 2007. Zions was
excited about her project and supported her with a grant
of $500, which will pay for a little over half of her
goal!
Meagan has had such a positive response to this project
that she now organizes service parties and creates doll
kits that allow other youth groups to help join in her
efforts. In the ten months that she has been creating
Nightingale Dolls, over 275 dolls have been delivered
to battered women’s shelters, rescue missions, hospitals
and the children’s justice center.
Meagan is always looking for people who are interested
in helping create Nightingale Dolls. Her kits
provide all material, pre cut and mostly pre sewn.
Basic hand sewing skills are required. Please
check out her online journal with pictures and reports
of where the dolls are going at http://nightingaledolls.blogspot.com.
If you are interested in finding out more and possibly
having a service party or receiving some doll kits,
just leave a comment on her latest blog entry with your
contact information and she will get back to you.
Meagan has adopted a quotation from Margaret Meade as
her organization’s motto. It states, “Never doubt
that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens
can change the world; indeed, it is the only thing that
ever does.”
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