Grandpa sews dolls with vitiligo to include children

John Stanganelli Junior is the kind of grandfather you would surely like to meet on a Sunday afternoon. The 64-year-old, bearer of the skin condition named vitiligo, learned the art of crochet with his wife to have a new hobby and then decided to sew a doll that represented him to give to his granddaughter.

Although at first his fingers hurt and the idea was just to make the dolls as a hobby, João was pleased with the result and decided to create some more models and spread so that children in these conditions also felt represented.

The success was so great that the daughter of author Tati Santos de Oliveira, Maria Luiza, who showed the first signs of skin change at the age of three, met João and won her own doll. Happy with the result, he decided to expand his "collection" also creating toys with alopecia areata, psoriasis, atopic dermatitis, among others. According to João, his new favorite activity aims to soften a situation that affects on average 2% of the population, and although it does not cause more serious damage to health, can still affect the psychological of the carriers, especially when it comes to children.

"The stains I have are beautiful, what hurts the most are the stains on people's character, " he comments.