The DOLLS OF HOPE PROJECT: A Case Study In HIV/AIDS Advocacy, Community Engagement, and Empowerment

By Cynthia Davis

Dr. Cynthia Davis with workshop participants, Havana, Cuba 2024.

Introduction

When I started the Dolls of Hope Project in the spring of 1998, I had no idea it would still be in existence 26 years later. I am an Assistant Professor in the College of Medicine and College of Science and Health at Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science (CDU) in Los Angeles, California. I was hired by CDU in the summer of 1984. The University was established in 1966 as a non-profit post-graduate medical education institution in South Los Angeles, a primarily African American community, as a direct result of the 1965 Watts Rebellion. Initially, I was hired to develop a state-funded teen pregnancy prevention project, but by 1985 I had segued into HIV/AIDS primary prevention work to address the tremendous stigma of HIV/AIDS and the fears that the disease would spread into the community.

My work included sex education, family life education, teen pregnancy, and prevention as well as HIV/AIDS-related risk reduction and primary prevention. But in 1998, my approach took a new path when I conceived of a project for World AIDS Day.

Initial Dolls of Hope Project Volunteer Group, Spring 1998, South Los Angeles

To commemorate the lives and deaths of people living with HIV/AIDS, the World Health Organization (WHO) developed World AIDS Day (WAD) in 1988. Annually, on December 1st, WHO chooses a theme for which communities around the globe implement commemorative activities, programs, and outreach campaigns to raise awareness of the HIV/AIDS crisis. In 1998, the theme was “Youth Being A Force For Change” and because I am an avid Black doll collector, I decided to develop a WAD program at the University, focused on making handmade cloth dolls for AIDS orphans.

The Global HIV/AIDS Crisis

My HIV/AIDS primary prevention work would take me around the world. Through my international travels advocating and educating on the HIV/AIDS crisis, I got to learn and witness, firsthand, the devastating impact of the HIV/AIDS crisis globally; particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa.

One moment that stands out is that in December 1994, I traveled to Uganda for the first Women’s and AIDS Conference to talk about an HIV/AIDS hospice I helped develop in South Los Angeles in 1991 working with a local non-profit organization, then called AIDS Hospice Foundation. While in Uganda, I visited orphanages and met children not only living with HIV/AIDS but who had lost parents to HIV/AIDS. I learned how they were struggling to survive; again, many were infected with HIV themselves. In 1996, I traveled to the United Nation’s Fourth World Conference on Women, which was held in Beijing, China. I made a formal presentation on the Global Impact of HIV/AIDS on Women. Thus, through my international travels as well as ongoing communication with AIDS Service Organization providers, HIV/AIDS advocates, and people living with HIV/AIDS; these experiences inspired me, in 1998, to create a WAD project to make handmade cloth dolls for HIV/AIDS affected and/or infected orphans living in Sub-Saharan Africa. I named the project: The Dolls of Hope Project.

Uganda, East Africa, Summer 2000. Casket Maker By Roadside Outside Kampala.

MY CHILDHOOD

When I was a little girl growing up in the 1950s and 60s in Redlands, California, I do not remember my mother buying me or my three sisters dolls. I wanted a doll to “play house” with; to mimic my mother in taking care of her babies; to cook and clean house with and tell stories, too. My mother, Annie Beatrice Lewis Callahan had seven children and for as long as I can remember, I wanted to have seven children when I grew up and got married too. At a young age, dolls represented to me, my younger brothers and sisters whom I could play with, take care of, and nurture. Being the second oldest child and a girl, meant that I had a lot of responsibilities. My mother was a Domestic Worker and was away from home a lot working for wealthy white families in Redlands. When she was away from home, I was given the responsibility of getting my brothers and sisters up in the morning, making their lunches for school, ensuring that they completed their homework, cleaning the house, cooking, as well as making sure my brothers and sisters took a bath at night before going to bed. This was a regular routine for me throughout grammar school and into middle school and high school.

Even though I didn’t personally have a doll to play with, I did come into contact with dolls when visiting Harris Department store in downtown Redlands, where my mother worked part-time managing the elevator as well as ironing women’s dresses and blouses before they were placed on the mannequins. When walking through Harris Department store in the toy section, I saw blond-haired, blue-eyed dolls, but no dolls that looked like me. At home, I also saw TV commercials for beautiful “white dolls”, especially during the Christmas Holidays. I do not remember my mother or any other relative buying any dolls, Black or white, for me and/or my sisters as small children nor even as pre-adolescents.

In reflecting on my childhood, I also have realized that having a doll to play with would have given me the space to abandon myself and realize a childhood free of work and grown-up responsibilities. I especially wanted a doll that I could hold on to and call my own, that looked like me, and that I could play with whenever I wanted. I wanted a doll to contemplate difficult and fearful times; a doll to express self-love and caring; a doll to share my thoughts and aspirations with; and a doll to help me understand the world I was living in. I rationalized that a Black doll would love and accept me unconditionally; a little Black girl trying to find her place and mission in a world of uncertainty, social injustice, prejudice, racism, and poverty.

I gave birth to my only child, Maisha Ain Teresa Davis in July 1985 and as she was growing up, I would purposefully go to department and toy stores looking for Black dolls to purchase for her to play with. I had a very hard time in the mid-80s finding Black dolls in local stores, but I was determined for my only child to have Black dolls to play with. Soon I had accumulated a large collection of Black dolls for Maisha over decades. After many years, I realized I was buying and collecting these Black dolls for myself, too; serendipitously reliving and reclaiming my childhood.

Davis with one of her handmade dolls, Havana, Cuba 2024.

DOLL MAKING

Every year in the late-80s and early-90s, I would attend the Annual Black Family Reunion Celebration in Exposition Park in Los Angeles, sponsored by the local chapter of the National Council of Negro Women (NCNW). At this annual event, there would be hundreds of primarily African American vendors selling Black art and African art, clothing, and food. I attended this event primarily to socialize purchase African art and find Black dolls to add to my and Maisha’s doll collection. It was at the Annual Black Family Reunion in Los Angeles that I met two master doll makers: Stormy Weather and Ingrid Andrews (nee Humphrey). These two women would not only teach me how to make Black dolls but would become lifelong mentors and friends.

Master Doll Maker, Stormy Weather

Stormy Weather was the first master doll maker I met and worked with, beginning in 1998. Stormy Weather began making Black dolls in 1996 at the age of 34. Stormy started making Black dolls because when she would attend doll shows, she didn’t see dolls that truly depicted Black people; Stormy said, “They were “ashy” or very, very Black”. She started making “Kin Folk” dolls, named after her relatives. Stormy’s mother had taught her how to sew when she was 7 years old in order “to keep her home” since she was the only girl living on the street in their neighborhood in Beaumont, Texas. Stormy’s mother, Patricia Hamilton, was a seamstress who altered clothing for white families in Beaumont, Texas, and had Stormy help her. Stormy’s family eventually moved to California and Stormy attended local colleges and obtained her Fashion Design degree from The Brooks Fashion Institute in Long Beach, California, and a BA in Arts from California State University Dominguez Hills in Carson, California. In her lifetime, she has made over 1,000 Black dolls. Besides Kin Folk dolls, she specialized in “Mud Pie” dolls named after the Mud Pies she used to make as a child when playing at her grandmother’s house. Stormy retired from the Los Angeles Unified School District after 20 years. She currently owns a dress shop in Downey, California. While working for LAUSD teaching Fashion Design classes, she was able to take her Fashion Design class to London and Paris for Fashion Week on two occasions.

Handmade doll by Stormy Weather, Los Angeles, 2023.

Master Doll Maker, Ingrid Humphrey

Ingrid Humphrey is the second master doll maker I began to work with, in 1998. Ingrid is from the state of Florida but lived in California in the 80s and 90s. I met her at one of the NCNW’s summer Black Family Reunion Celebrations in the late 90s in Los Angeles. Ingrid makes very stylized Black dolls which reflect the diversity among Black people. Her dolls, like Stormy’s, are very “life-like” and colorful. She uses colors and African prints a lot with her dolls and makes their features, depicting large eyes and large lips, painted in red. She also uses fancy gold and multi-color jewelry. The doll’s hair looks “nappy” and is made of yarn that has been pulled to make it look natural. Each of her dolls is unique and one of a kind.

Ingrid shared with me the following about why she became interested in making Black Dolls: “As a little girl, I noticed that African American dolls, especially cloth dolls, were very limited in availability, I never imagined that one day I would become a cloth doll artist. My grandmother was a professional seamstress, she taught me to sew at the age of 9. It wasn’t my favorite thing to do as a little girl and I only had the patience enough to sew small simple things. One day I was browsing in the art section of a bookstore and took interest in art dolls. I first began making dolls 29 years ago during a period when I was recovering from a head injury. I needed to feel engaged in something that made me happy”.

“My Sister Dolls are made using a variety of mostly authentic African and Indian cotton fabrics, beads, trinkets, unique trimmings, recycled silk, and lots of spontaneous imagination. A friend of mine taught me to spin and dye the wool that I use for the dolls’ hair. I also have friends that are artists of different mediums which helped me develop a mixture of techniques which contributes to my creativity and colorful imagination.”

Ingrid Humphrey and Davis, International AIDS Conference, Durban, South Africa, 2000.

Starting The Dolls of Hope Project in 1998

I created the Dolls of Hope Project to enhance community mobilization efforts to “Break the Silence” surrounding HIV/AIDS in affected Black communities, both domestically and internationally. I recruited volunteers to make handmade cloth dolls which were then distributed to agencies around the world that worked with children, youth, and/or women who have or are affected by HIV/AIDS. We also provided dolls to children and youth living in poverty. To date, over 7,000 dolls have been distributed globally in countries including, South Africa, Kenya, Senegal, the Republic of Congo, Zimbabwe, Uganda, Mozambique, Nigeria, Ghana, Tanzania, Thailand, India, Brazil, Peru, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico, and Cuba.

The Dolls of Hope Project brought communities together. By facilitating the exchange of dolls between “non-HIV infected” community members and people living with HIV/AIDS, I could connect these two communities; and through this “connection” bring the community at large together to address not only the stigma associated with HIV/AIDS, but to address the isolation and depression sometimes experienced by people living with HIV/AIDS. The Project was also a conduit for learning. When I started the project there was so much fear and misinformation circulating in the Black community in the U.S., and in Africa, such as conspiracies about HIV/AIDS being “a man-made virus” and a form of genocide against Black people and other People of Color. I discovered that during my group doll-making sessions, I was able to dispel many myths and misinformation about the origins of the virus and I was also able to educate at-risk individuals, especially Black women and girls, about their risk for acquiring HIV as well as other STIs.

Participants could either keep the doll they made during the workshop or donate their doll to my program. Donated dolls would be disseminated locally and worldwide by community service programs serving at-risk youth and children in need. I had made connections with several community advocates, locally, nationally, and globally who were working, like me, at the grassroots level to ameliorate structural and institutional racism and develop effective community solutions to reducing the incidence of HIV in BIPOC communities.

In the spring of 1998, I found out that the theme for World AIDS Day 1998 was “Youth, Being A Force For Change”. I decided, why not make dolls for HIV/AIDS orphans as part of WAD activities to be implemented on campus at Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science on December 1, 1998. I sought funding from a local pharmaceutical representative from Burroughs Welcome Pharmaceutical Company and $5,000 was donated. I decided to solicit the support of master doll makers whom I had met at the ANNUAL NCNW’s Black Family Reunion Festivals in Los Angeles over the years and from whom I had been purchasing Black dolls for several years. I contacted Ingrid Humphrey who lived in San Diego, California, and convinced her to drive from San Diego over several months to South Los Angeles to facilitate the workshops. I paid her a consultant fee and paid for her gasoline. I needed local volunteers to help make the dolls, so I developed a Public Service Announcement which was aired on radio station, KJLH 102.3 FM, as well as placed an advertisement in the Los Angeles Times newspaper seeking volunteers to help make dolls to be given to AIDS orphans in Africa. A large number of women from South Los Angeles responded and I developed a monthly calendar where we started to meet at one of my HIV/AIDS education program sites on Saturdays over several months. Additionally, with some of the donated funds, I was able to purchase doll-making materials such as cloth, beads, yard, needles, thread, etc. Ingrid brought the doll bodies, already made, as well as the outfits and yarn for the dolls’ hair. Ingrid drove to Los Angeles twice a month over several months and facilitated the doll-making workshops with a group of HIV-infected women I knew from my work in HIV primary prevention in South Los Angeles. The group also included women who were not infected with HIV, but who had heard about the project and were either doll makers or wanted to learn how to make Black dolls. Ingrid came with her doll pattern for what she called, “Sista Dolls” which had angel wings attached to the bodies. We would stuff these dolls with poly-fill, which looks like cotton, dress them in African print outfits, and then attach the angel wings to the back of the dolls. Again, some of the women who volunteered and came on a regular basis were HIV-positive but they initially did not share their HIV-positive status with the full group of volunteers. After working together over several months and bonding as a group, the women began to disclose their status. And when they did, the larger group of non-HIV-infected women accepted them with love, concern, and support; unconditionally.

Volunteers Making Dolls of Hope in South Los Angeles, Spring 1998.

This first group of volunteers ended up making over 300 dolls in six months. We also had money available and purchased a couple of hundred Black and African dolls from a local Black Doll vendor selling dolls; her name is Charlotte Dixon. As December 1998 approached, I sent out a letter of solicitation to over 100 agencies in the U.S and Africa about the Dolls of Hope Project with the caveat that if they wanted to participate, they would need to send me dolls made by local individuals in their communities infected with HIV and that I would send them the dolls we made in our workshops. About 30 agencies responded and we primarily received dolls in exchange from Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) located in Uganda. So, on December 1, 1998, a WAD ceremony was held on the CDU campus, and over 100 community residents attended the event. A member of the U.S. Presidential Advisory Commission on HIV/AIDS at the time who happened to live in Los Angeles attended our program and spoke at the ceremony. Additionally, the Los Angeles City AIDS Coordinator, Mr. Fred Egan, attended the event and gave words of welcome. During the program, presentations were made commemorating individuals living with HIV/AIDS in our community as well as commemorating individuals from our community who had passed away due to HIV/AIDS. Many HIV-positive and non-HIV-infected individuals came to this inaugural CDU WAD celebration without feeling fear, shame, stigmatization, or isolation.

World AIDS Celebration, 12/1/98. Fred Egan, LA City AIDS Coordinator and Cynthia Davis with “Sista Dolls.”

I used the Dolls of Hope Project workshops to not only make dolls but, while I had a captive audience of community volunteers, used the workshops to educate the community about HIV/AIDS primary prevention and to dispel misinformation about HIV; especially about how the virus was transmitted and who was being primarily impacted by disease transmission. At the time there was a lot of misinformation about HIV/AIDS, who was being primarily impacted, and conspiracy theories that HIV was a “man-made” virus. I took advantage of these opportunities to dispel those myths.

When WAD ended in December 1998, I thought that the project would end; that did not happen. As word circulated in the Black community about the dolls, I began to receive requests to conduct additional Dolls of Hope Project workshops in South Los Angeles. These requests came in from elementary, middle, and high schools, churches, sororities, support groups, and other non-profit organizations. Additionally, I submitted a proposal about educating HIV/AIDS advocates about the project at the 2000 International AIDS Conference which was to be held in Durban, South Africa. My proposal was accepted to be presented as a poster session. I was ecstatic! I identified funding to attend the conference as well as sufficient funding to bring Ingrid Humphrey along with me to help me facilitate a Dolls of Hope Project workshop. In addition to the poster session, Ingrid and I facilitated a half-day Dolls of Hope workshop where over 60 conference attendees participated; both men and women from all over the world participated. I also developed a workbook on how to develop a Dolls of Hope Project and made copies to disseminate to the workshop attendees. This first International AIDS Conference in 2000 which I attended to promote and educate the world about the Dolls of Hope Project was a tremendous success.

International AIDS Conference, Durban, South Africa, 2000.

A few years later, I had another proposal highlighting the project accepted into the 2004 International AIDS Conference in Bangkok, Thailand. In Bangkok, I was able to bring with me a South African art dealer and two South African Master Doll Makers. My colleague from South Africa registered to have a vendor exhibit booth to sell African art and recommended two South African women to accompany me in facilitating the doll-making workshop. While I provided instructions on how to make the cloth dolls, the two South African master doll makers provided instructions on how to make “Beaded Ndebele” dolls from South Africa. The workshop was also a tremendous success and allowed me to make contact with a group of health professionals who traveled annually to Honduras. I was invited to Honduras in 2007 to conduct workshops with women living with HIV/AIDS. Additionally, I was asked to conduct Safer Sex workshops within the local Garifuna¹ community targeting at-risk populations. I also presented at a local high school and on the island of Roatan, where I facilitated Safer Sex workshops targeting the Garifuna people who live on the island.

Honduras, San Pedro Sula, verano de 2007. Niña que recibió una muñeca de la esperanza.

Trekking Across Africa

Uganda 2000, Children receiving Dolls of Hope at a local community center.

At the end of the 2000 International AIDS Conference in South Africa, I spent several weeks with a photojournalist traveling from South Africa to West Africa. The goal was to interact with local African doll makers working in doll-making cooperatives as well as to purchase African dolls for my personal collection. I traveled to the following countries: Uganda, Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Ivory Coast, and Senegal, and then flew back home. During my month-long trek across Africa, I purchased African dolls of all types and representative of various tribes and cultural traditions as well as African art. I also tried to interact with as many HIV-positive African women and men and service providers as possible who were operating NGOs to combat the further spread of HIV/AIDS among their communities. I visited hostels, bars, houses of prostitution, schools, and HIV/AIDS orphanages sharing my expertise in HIV/AIDS primary prevention as well as learning about the cultural traditions of African doll making; how Africans were engaged in HIV/AIDS primary prevention and advocacy; and how women and girls were fairing given that they were experiencing the greatest burden of HIV/AIDS disease on the continent.

Setting up materials at the William Grant Still Art Center, Los Angeles, 2022.

I witnessed how the tradition of African doll-making was being negatively impacted by HIV/AIDS’ high mortality among the women who had been passing on their doll-making tradition from generation to generation. During this time, many African doll makers had died of HIV/AIDS and/or were infected with HIV/AIDS, and many young women, even their daughters and nieces, were not interested in carrying on the tradition. Younger people were focusing on how to survive the HIV/AIDS pandemic by any means necessary and doll-making was not a high priority for them at this time. When I went to a doll-making cooperative in South Africa to purchase traditional Ndebele dolls, I would see only older and senior women in these cooperatives and not younger women being mentored and trained in the art of African doll-making.

Traveling to Cuba

Davis with workshop participants in Havana, Cuba 2024.

In 2006 and 2007, I traveled to Cuba to learn about the Cuban healthcare system with a group of healthcare professionals from South Los Angeles. These trips were underwritten by the California Wellness Foundation with the intent for the healthcare professionals to identify models within the Cuban healthcare system that could be replicated in South Los Angeles once we returned home. While in Cuba, I disseminated dolls to children I came in contact with as well as local youth groups and conducted a Dolls of Hope Project workshop at a local Senior Citizen’s Center affiliated with a Mental Health facility.

In Cuba in 2007, they had a well-organized structure at the national, provincial, and municipal levels to combat the spread of HIV/AIDS. Our group visited the Territorial Center for the Prevention of STDs and HIV/AIDS, where I interviewed the staff about HIV/AIDS primary prevention.²

These trips to Cuba in 2006 and 2007 were inspirational because I learned so much about the Cuban healthcare system and how the Cuban government had successfully slowed the spread of HIV on the island in the 80s and 90s by being engaged in broad-based community mobilization efforts to educate and inform the community about how to protect themselves from acquiring HIV as well as other STIs. I also learned how the Cuban government engages entire communities in advocating for public health measures that are life-sustaining. In February 2024, I returned to Cuba as a scholar in the Contours: ArteCalle Residency where I was among a group of over 20 women, including academicians, college students, Master Doll Artists, and Doll Enthusiasts participating in a transnational cultural exchange program among Black Cuban Doll Artists and Black Doll Enthusiasts from throughout the Diaspore. This cultural exchange program was sponsored by the University of Minnesota’s Theatre Arts Department. While in Cuba for nine days, we participated in doll-making workshops and learned about Black Cuban doll makers’ local community engagement and social justice programs to improve the lives of women and girls as well as their efforts to support members of the LGBTQ+ community in Cuba. We also visited a former slave plantation, and a local youth center and participated in several cultural events culminating with a community arts exhibit and music and dance festival at a local LGBTQ+ Center near Havana. It was so gratifying to return to Cuba after 17 years to see how resilient the Cuban people still are after 60+ decades of a U.S.-mandated embargo. I learned about Proyecto La Muneca Negra (e. g. The Black Doll Project), developed by local doll artist, Margarita Montalvo, who has single-handedly worked to bring women and girls together in her local community to provide income-generating opportunities/jobs as well as to empower them to make a better life for themselves and their families by engaging in social justice and self-empowerment activities. I look forward to returning to Cuba to continue developing partnerships with the numerous individuals and groups I interacted with during this cultural exchange program.

Davis with Margarita Montalvo, the Director of Proyecto La Muñeca Negra in Havana, Cuba, 2024.

Exhibiting Black Dolls

In 2016, I was asked to curate the Annual Black Doll Exhibit at the William Grant Still Art Center in Los Angeles, California. A city-funded community art center that has been in the community for over 40 years. I was hesitant at first because I had never curated an art exhibit, but decided to take on the challenge. The exhibit was held from mid-December 2015 to February 2016 and was titled, “Trench Art Retrospective: – Women of the African Diaspora In The Trenches Fighting The War Against HIV/AIDS”. Partnering organizations included: William Grant Still Art Center, Charles R. Drew University, Black Women for Wellness, ABACT Women’s Sub-Committee, AIDS Healthcare Foundation, In The Mean Time Men’s Group, His Sheltering Arms, and the Alcoholism Center for Women. The goals of the HIV/AIDS-themed exhibit were multi-faceted:

To focus on the negative impact the HIV/AIDS pandemic has had and continues to have on women and girls of the African Diaspora,
To Break the Silence surrounding HIV/AIDS in the Black Community,
To facilitate the empowering of PLWAs and other at-risk community members to proactively address the stigma, shame, isolation, and fear related to the disease, and
To heighten awareness of the importance of knowing one’s HIV status and if HIV positive, to facilitate individuals seeking immediate medical treatment, care, and support.

My HIV mobile testing program provided HIV testing and asked the AIDS Healthcare Foundation’s (AHF) Public Health Division staff to be present in their mobile van to help with HIV rapid testing on the opening day of the Art Exhibit which was December 12, 2015.

The event highlighted HIV/AIDS’ Impact on women and girls of the African Diaspora. There were Black dolls on display as well as Altars, Quilts, a National Names Project Quilt, sculptures, and video previews of relevant documentaries focusing on Black women and HIV/AIDS.

On the opening day, December 12th, the program started at 2:00 PM, where guests toured the art center and viewed the exhibit. At 3:00 PM, there was a panel discussion with several women living with HIV/AIDS and then a Q&A session. From 3:00 PM to 4:00 PM, there was a reception with food and attendees were able to continue to view the artwork and dolls. Later on in the month, on December 19th, I conducted a Dolls of Hope Project workshop with community residents and at-risk women and girls, where they made handmade cloth dolls that were given to at-risk women and girls and/or women and girls living with HIV/AIDS in Los Angeles. On January 9, 2016, CDU and AHF sponsored the documentaries, “Why Us, Left Behind And Dying” and “Wilhelmina’s War”, both documentaries focused on the impact of HIV/AIDS in the African American community. On January 23, 2016, I conducted another Dolls of Hope Project workshop.

All of this programming took place in partnership with staff from the William Grant Still Art Center. Eleven (11) artists committed to exhibiting their artwork and/or dolls at the exhibit. The artists included: Floyd Bell, Stormy Weather, Ingrid Humphrey, Gary Jones, Ofelia Esparza, Allison Allen, Bernard Hoyes, Ramsess, Joey Terrill, Yolanda Gonzalez, and myself.

Several hundred community residents attended the opening, and more came to view the exhibit over the two-month exhibition period. The William Grant Still Art Center is open and free to the public. It was estimated that 100 people would stop by the art center on a weekly basis to view the exhibit. CDU and AHF developed PSAs and news releases to encourage the public to visit. I also received assistance from AHF’s social media department to promote the event on AHF’s multiple social media platforms.

I had never heard of the term “Trench Art”, but learned of its meaning in a conversation with a colleague of mine in the College of Science and Health at CDU. Trench Art is a term given to souvenirs and other pieces of “art” handcrafted by soldiers, POWs, or even civilians from spent (i.e. used) bullets and/or shell casings used during warfare. Trench Art is thought to have originated with the advent of World War I as well as during World War II and the Vietnam War. Soldiers while in the trenches in World War I would amass these empty bullets and/or shell casings and make “objects” out of them; from abstract artifacts to simple everyday personal items like ashtrays, knives, rings, vases, and even lockets and pins (Trench Art factsheet). That is how the term originated. Soldiers utilized these spent shell casings deposited in trenches while fighting on the battlefield and made “art” from them.

The Trench Art exhibit was very inspirational. The highlight of the exhibit was a wall painting I commissioned developed from a scene in an HIV/AIDS-related film about HIV/AIDS’ impact in South Africa. The film is called “Angels in the Dusk” which focuses on the lives of several HIV/AIDS orphans in South Africa at the height of the HIV/AIDS pandemic. In one scene in the film, a funeral is taking place and for as far as one can see on the horizon, there are grave headstones. I had a local artist from Los Angeles re-create that scene in the film in a section of the exhibit where we painted on the names of local and international HIV/AIDS activists and advocates whom I had known and/or worked with over the decades who had died of HIV/AIDS. Individuals from Los Angeles like Marilyn Howell, James Hill, Lonzie Moore, Elma Colbert, etc. the list goes on and on after 39 years.

In 2023, the Dolls of Hope Project was invited to participate in a National HIV/AIDS Art Exhibit being held in Atlanta, Georgia from June 23, 2023, to October 15, 2023. This exhibit was curated by an artist and writer named Matt Terrell and the title of the Art Exhibit was, “The Living Room, San Francisco, 1986”. It was called “The Living Room” because in 1986, Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi made available her “Living Room” to gay advocate and activist, Cleve Jones, and his friends in San Francisco where they came to make quilt panels to commemorate their friends who had died of HIV/AIDS. This community mobilization effort by Cleve Jones and friends evolved into the Names Project AIDS Memorial Quilt which today consists of over 48,000 panels and weighs approximately 54 tons. The art exhibit was held at a local community center in Atlanta called the Fulton County Emma Darnell Aviation Community Cultural Center where I hosted a Dolls of Hope Project workshop on opening day, June 23, 2023.

Dolls of Hope Today

Over the past 26 years, the Dolls of Hope Project has been implemented without interruption and I have been able to maintain and implement the project based on private donations as well as by personally paying out-of-pocket to maintain the project. In the summer of 2023, I received a generous $100,000 grant from the California Arts Council to enhance the implementation of the Dolls of Hope Project workshops targeting medically under-resourced communities in South Los Angeles. Since October 2023, I have been facilitating monthly Dolls of Hope Project workshops throughout South Los Angeles at schools and community-based organizations to address the stigma still associated with HIV/AIDS in the Black and Brown community after 45 years.

Since its inception, over 7,000 Dolls of Hope have been distributed worldwide. The Dolls of Hope Project has been instrumental in helping to reduce the fear, shame, isolation, and stigma associated with HIV/AIDS on a local, national, and international basis. I have implemented Dolls of Hope Project workshops throughout the U.S., including Oakland, California; Riverside, California; Culver City, California; Jackson Mississippi; Harlem, New York; Fort Lauderdale, Florida; Chicago, Illinois; Fort Myers, Florida; Columbus, Ohio; Los Angeles, California; and Sacramento, California to name a few of the cities where I have traveled in the United States. And internationally, the dolls have brought joy to numerous children and youth around the world wherever they have been made and/or disseminated.

Through the Dolls of Hope Project, I have been proactively engaged for over 26 consecutive years in working to stem the tide of HIV/AIDS in communities of color on a national and global basis. I have even incorporated Altar making into the Dolls of Hope Project based upon a friendship with an installation artist named Beverly Heath who taught me how to make Altars and dolls as a form of healing and self-care over 27 years ago.

The Dolls of Hope Project has not only contributed to sustaining and bringing to light the art of Black doll making and the importance of maintaining and sustaining this cultural tradition in the Black community, but it has also allowed the HIV/AIDS-infected community, as well as the broader HIV/AIDS, affected community to build bridges of hope and share unconditional love and respect for all human beings regardless of their HIV/AIDS status.

Doll makers Margarita Montalvo and Cynthia Davis, Havana, Cuba, 2024.

The Dolls of Hope Project has demonstrated what one determined individual can do when supported by the broader community focused on improving the quality of life of the medically underserved as well as in working proactively to build bridges among cultures and to work proactively to de-construct structural and institutional racism in all of its iterations and manifestations. In all of my community engagement work, especially in mentoring the future generations of public health professionals. I try to instill in them the importance of believing in the “Power of One”. One person can make a significant difference in the world when motivated by unconditional love for one’s community and humankind.

“La Luta Continua”: Peace.

Cynthia Davis is an Assistant Professor and Program Director in the College of Medicine and College of Science and Health at Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science. In 1986, Davis was asked to direct one of the first federally funded Centers for Disease Control and Prevention programs targeting the African American community. In 1988, Professor Davis was recruited by AIDS Hospice Foundation, currently called AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF), and after a year of community mobilization efforts, a new hospice, called the Carl Bean Hospice, opened in 1991 in South Los Angeles. Davis joined the Board of Directors of AHF in December 1988. AHF is currently the largest AIDS Service Organization in the world; serving over 2 million clients in 48 countries as well as in 15 states and the District of Columbia in the U. S. In 1998, Davis developed, as a World AIDS Day project, the Dolls of Hope Project, which involves making handmade cloth dolls to be given to agencies working with HIV/AIDS affected and/or infected children, youth and women on a local, national and international level. To date, over 7,000 Dolls of Hope have been disseminated in South Africa, Senegal, the Republic of Congo, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Uganda, Mozambique, Nigeria, Ghana, Tanzania, Thailand, India, Brazil, Peru, Honduras, Dominican Republic, Mexico, Haiti, and Cuba as well as throughout the United States. Davis currently teaches in CDU’s Urban MPH program in the College of Science and Health as well as Directs the University’s Mobile Health Outreach Project (MoHOP); one of the first “Street Medicine Programs” developed in the U.S. in 1991. In 2017, the College of Science and Health created the “Cynthia Davis Lifelong Learning Institute for Community Transformation” which houses numerous community service programs Dr. Davis has developed and sustained over the past 40 years working in South Los Angeles.

1
The Garifuna are a people of mixed race: freed Africans and Indigenous American peoples that migrated to Honduras from the Caribbean Island of Saint Vincent and they speak Garifuna and have maintained their African cultural traditions.
2
Territorial Center for the Prevention of STDs and HIV/AIDS, “The main function of people in the health sector, independent of the health professionals, is to prepare and train facilitators with the information they need to go out into the community to educate and inform the populace about HIV/AIDS prevention.

The HIV adult prevalence rate in Cuba in 2007 was estimated to be about 0.07 percent, one of the lowest in the world and certainly the lowest in the region. Three of the major modes of transmissions in other nations, mother-to-child transmission, transmission through blood transfusion, and through intravenous drug use, were virtually non-existent in Cuba. Instead, sexual contact accounted for approximately 99 percent of all cases. In terms of sexuality, Cuba has followed a trajectory nearly opposite of the norm. Most of the first HIV cases diagnosed were among heterosexual men, but the disease then crossed over into the gay community as male-to-male sexual contact began to spread the disease. In 2007, men who have sex with men (MSM) were one of the most at-risk groups, making up for around 86 percent of men infected with HIV in Cuba.

With the establishment of the Working Group for Confronting and Fighting AIDS, the government and non-governmental organizations created comprehensive measures to fight the disease. Firstly, Cuba banned the importation of all human blood products and destroyed potentially infected supplies, effectively eliminating transmission of HIV through blood transfusions. Next, the country provided wide-scale HIV testing for Cubans who had travelled abroad and potentially brought the disease back into the country. The most important measures served to prevent sexual transmission, namely through education programs, medical examinations, and admittance of HIV-positive individuals into specialized health centers called Sanatoria. These Sanatoria were somewhat controversial at the time, especially in terms of possible human rights violations. Although severely isolated in the late 1980s, the program improved significantly, providing outlets for social integration and multiple levels of care for PLWHAs in Cuba”