About Ragbaby Exchange

The Ragbaby Exchange was founded by Sherri Lumpkin. The purpose is to create a safe and warm environment that encourages participants to use doll making as a tool for self-reflection. The Ragbaby Exchange also has an international component where ragdolls made by volunteers are sent overseas to young children who don’t have access to dolls.

Research has proven that dolls can be a source of comfort and therapy. Doctors have used dolls to calm patients with dementia. Social workers and therapist use dolls to help abuse victims express their trauma.

 

The Ragbaby Exchange is a process of discovery that brings about a sense of acceptance of one’s own beauty. Engaging in the expressive art form of doll-making enables participants to develop a doll that reflects their own self-image.

 

Our mission is to inspire participants to embrace inner love for themselves through doll-making. Our approach celebrates both the differences and similarities of diverse people and cultures. We strongly promote the idea of giving, which we believe creates a two-fold effect: empowerment enjoyed by the giver and the energy of love and compassion felt by the receiver.

About the Founder & Executive Director

Sherri Roberts Lumpkin became a doll maker in 1987 after she and her mother searched endlessly for a black angel to top the Christmas tree. They couldn’t find one, so Sherri designed one for her mom. To her surprise, she received so many orders for this angel that looked like so many of her friends, family, and colleagues. While working as a docent at the Anacostia Community Museum in Washington, D.C., Sherri was asked to teach a doll-making workshop for school children .Through the workshop, she began to notice in the children a little of what she had noticed in herself as a child—the lack of validation of their natural beauty. Sherri began talking to them and telling them how beautiful she thought they were and convinced them to make dolls that looked like them. To the children’s surprise they fell in love with what they created. Sherri however, was not surprised. Sherri believes that each and every human being has the capacity to love themselves and see their own beauty if directed in an inspiring and encouraging ways. Her charge is to bring out that inner beauty in everyone so they will learn to appreciate their outer beauty. After loving themselves, people will learn to value the beauty in others.