The Calico Dolls Project has now been running for ten years and is our most successful project in recent years.

Children needing surgery are naturally very apprehensive before the surgery. They usually cry and scream a lot during surgery which only requires a local anaesthetic and they often need to be restrained during this type of surgery.

The need was for the nursing staff to find some way of allaying their fear and hopefully make them more cooperative during surgery.

Gerry Silk (who was a Clinical Education Nurse at the Royal Children's Hospital in Melbourne) developed the idea of providing children with plain, calico dolls before surgery and encouraging the children to draw in the features on the dolls. It was found that the children invariably drew in their own aches, pains and injuries and that they were much more able to describe these aches and pains using the dolls. It is also much easier for the nurse to explain what is going to happen in the surgery with the help of the dolls. With the much improved understanding the children are naturally much less apprehensive and are much more cooperative during surgery.

The need was then to get a reliable supply of the large number of calico dolls needed by the hospital.

The Whitehorse Kiwanis Club developed a plan to :

• start with our own club making dolls and then to expand to as many Kiwanis clubs as possible making dolls so that the project could get under way,

• get publicity for the project and hence to get other groups in the community involved in making dolls,

• spread the idea to as many other hospitals as possible both in Australia and overseas,

• coordinate doll making by groups in the wider community and to keep interest up so that a steady stream of dolls would be available to hospitals,

• identify suppliers who would supply materials either for free or at a discount.

The project expanded more rapidly and received more publicity than ever expected.

The project has been spread Australia wide and internationally by Kiwanis clubs.

Children undergoing surgery have benefited greatly from this project (and will continue to benefit in the future) through having their fears and anxiety alleviated. The medical staff involved in the surgery have benefited because the children are much easier and more pleasant to work with.

Our ongoing work on this project is to arrange for various community groups (Senior Citizens, Girl Guides etc) to make calico dolls. We supply the calico and the stuffing materials to the groups and collect the completed dolls from the groups and deliver them to hospitals - Royal Children’s Hospital and hospitals in our area.
We purchase the calico from a local supplier and collect the stuffing material (in bales) from a furniture manufacturer who supplies us with these "offcuts" at no charge.

 Construction of Small Projects :

Puppet Theatre

The Principal of Parkmore Preschool happened to remark to the chairman of the Kiwanis Club of Whitehorse’s  Marketing Committee (John Fife) that she had seen an outdoor puppet theatre at another preschool and that  the Parkmore Preschool children would greatly enjoy a similar facility. John immediately advised her that this was just the sort of project that the Whitehorse Club was good at and enjoyed doing.

John Leishman (chairman of the Projects committee) put a lot of effort into designing a more suitable and elaborate theatre than the original model. The materials were carefully selected (for suitability for use by young children and for long life outside) and purchased.

Several working bees were held to construct a solid, functional, outdoor puppet theatre.

The theatre consists of a screen, to conceal the puppeteers, with an opening for the puppets to perform in; a floor area for the spectators to sit on; and a small floor area behind the screen for the puppeteers.