Help the Zambezi Doll Company

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The Zambezi Doll Company, developed by the African Artists Community Development Project, is in the very final stages of making a dream come true for mothers with disabled kids in Zambia. While many non-profit organizations depend solely on donations to meet their budgets, the Zambezi Doll Company takes a different approach. They are eager and ready to change their economic situations not through handouts but by using their hands to create one-of-a-kind, natural fiber dolls in five skin tones. 

Your donations will enable the Zambezi Doll Company to put the last steps of their marketing plan in place and get their on-line store noticed all over the world.   

In 2010, when this project began, these women all had disabled children attending the Mama Bakhita Cheshire Home. Struggling to make ends meet in a country with little opportunity for work, they met as a group every Monday and tried to help each other contend with the challenges of food, medical and economic insecurity. They became a tight social group supporting one another through thick and thin. And there were some very thin times through the years as they balanced on the edge of survival. Out of those thin times, Zambezi Dolls were born.    

The Zambezi Doll Company is now owned and operated by the doll makers.

This is a big deal. In a country with 80% poverty, this is economic empowerment for women at the bottom of their society: poor and abandoned by husbands who could not face the challenge of their differently-abled children. Often, the women themselves are blamed for their situation, implying that their children are evidence of some mistake or sin in their past.   

They produce a high quality, eco-friendly doll that comes in five skin tones reflecting divers ethnicities. Each doll is an original piece of craftsmanship, work that took years to refine. They have done this in a truly cooperative way, sharing the different parts of doll-making depending on their strengths.   

With this last round of funding, their cooperatively owned internet business will go live and enter the world market with a timely product: “Dolls of Color, Made for Play”.

Timely, because there has never been a better time to introduce dolls of every skin color, every size and shape, male and female, young and old. Doesn't the world need a doll that represents us all?    

Please give whatever you can. Give us two months to finish building our clientele and learning how to market the dolls and we will show the world that Zambian women are ready to enter the world marketplace.   

Thank you.