The Ugly doll project.

Changing young lives one doll at a time.

creatively offering care.

Learning In Action

The Ugly Doll Project was co-curriculated with students alternative education students at the Accelerated Learning Academy in Flint, Michigan. students living in poverty, violence and neglect they wanted more.
Starting with the student questions “Why the hell do we have to learn about Van Gogh!?” My professional practice was forever transformed.
Learning Elizabeth Keckley through the National Endowment for the Humanities summer teaching institute, Crafting Freedom I learned about artists, artisans and craftfolk from the Civil War Era.
Keckley born into slavery, a self-taught seamstress and later modiste—she was the exclusive dress maker to Mary Todd Lincoln, spending four years in the White House.
Sewing 20 stitches to an inch students learned how to sew like Keckley was were our story begins; we then worked together creating The Ugly Doll Project.
Thinnking. Designing.

Students did not understand or have knowledge of sewing. Learning how to use the tools of sewing, straight pins, scissors, needles, thread, how to manipulate fabric, how to make a design, how to make and use a pattern and how to sew became the next steps.
My student and I decided to make dolls which would be donated to The Shelter of Flint. Many student knew of had personal experience with The Shelter—a space for women and their children to escape to while enduring domestic partner abuses—and these youth, these teenagers understood how forgotten the children are who are forcibly relocated from home to a shelter with little to no persional belongings.
Sewing care. sewing hope.

The dolls are care, love, and service in action.
The dolls change real lives and give comfort to little people who are often erased and ignored.
The dolls offer safety and security to children and often a sigh of relief and care to their parents.
The dolls show staff of shelters that their hard, emotionally draining work is seen and that they are not alone.
The dolls are easy to make and powerful to receive.
The dolls are a tool that allow the maker to be a better human being.
The dolls support the framework of The Four Loves offering Protection Love for families struggling with outcomes of intimate partner abuse.
The Ugly Doll Project changes lives.

The Ugly Doll Project. service. care. creativity.

If you, your students, or organization wish to complete The Ugly Doll Project giving tangible care to the children forcibly relocated due to intimate partner abuse and all the outcomes such abuse brings into a. home, please reach out to me vial email at mjleaym.fernandez@gmail.com. Any group larger or small can participate.

Consider doing the project if you:

Teach middle school or high school—this is real service learning in action!
lead a club, community group or business—make real connections in your community
have a bunch of friends willing to sew

Here are student (middle school and high school student works in various stages of completion. All of the dolls were gifted; some have a baby (and a pocket to hold the baby), some were made to gift to cognitively impaired students in our classes, others were made by cognitively challenged students to donate, others were made by “normative” students.

Teenager who regardless of their life circumstance made time to learn the skills, sewing processes, and production of their Ugly Doll to donate. Illustrating care in action for many adults who are often wrapped up in what comes next—not able to just slow down and be creative to offer care to another. Teenagers who enact their superpowers!