Sales from a Clearwater woman’s handmade Trump voodoo dolls led to a $1,100 donation to a local food bank.
“I wanted to let you know that I have sent Trump voodoo dolls all over the country,” Renee Feinman told Creative Loafing Tampa Bay. “I just sold my 74th voodoo doll and I have sent over $1,100 to Feeding Tampa Bay.”
In April, CL wrote about how Feinman's synagogue donated handmade teddy bears to All Children’s Hospital. The 61-year-old, along with six women from her synagogue, also organized a mask-making event for All Children’s; the effort sent 100 masks to the facility’s non-clinical personnel and family members visiting.
The 7-inch Trump voodoo dolls were a way for the 61-year-old science teacher to stay productive during the quarantine, which she called a stressful and difficult time.
“I thought of the Trump doll and the food pantries,” Feinman told CL, adding that she started making them after the election in 2016 as a panacea for anyone irked by the election results. So she created her own design and gave them as a gift to friends, “who enjoyed them, got a chuckle and found them to be a good conversation piece”
The longtime Clearwater resident sells the dolls on Etsy for $20.21; each shipment comes with six straight pins. She donated profit from each sale ($15) to Feeding Tampa Bay, a nonprofit that’s been tasked with feeding the growing number of locals who now find themselves unsure of where their next meals are coming from.
On Monday, a representative from Feeding Tampa Bay said the organization has served more than 10 million meals locally during the pandemic.
“Before the coronavirus shutdowns, more than 600,000 individuals were already food insecure,” Shannon Hannon Oliviero, External Affairs Officer for Feeding Tampa Bay, told CL. “Unemployment increased the number of food insecure people to 1.1 million.”
“I can only make so many in a day. I'll make as many as I can and update Etsy as I make them,” Feinman said of the dolls, which involve lots of hand-stitching, machine sewing, ironing on the fact, stuffing and closing to make. “When I sell the first 10, I'll send them $150 and hopefully have 10 more voodoo dolls done and ready to load into Etsy so I can continue raising money.”
Oliviero told CL that the nonprofit maximized every dollar that’s donated. If you need food, visit feedingtampabay.org and click the ‘Find Food’ tab.
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