Oriel - African Refugee Doll

Here's some more info on the Refugee situation in Africa ...

Burrundians returned to their country after 18 years living in refugee camps (since conflict in 1970s). 

One man and his two daughters was  lucky enough to return to his family land (with some struggle as it had been taken over by someone else).  He says, "To have a solid house and to be at home, this makes the biggest difference to me that I can think of. When I settled again here, I felt peace and happiness. Despite of all that I have lived and seen – I was finally home."

Since 2002, some 490,000 Burundians have returned home with UNHCR help. UNHCR-funded returnee monitors visited more than 14,000 families last year, often intervening to ensure the protection and fair treatment of the returnees.

Two UNHCR non-governmental partners and Burundi's National Land and Property Commission have contributed to the peaceful resolution of several thousand land conflicts. And under its shelter program, UNHCR has provided nearly 90,000 families with building materials, as well mosquito nets to protect against malaria, which is endemic along the shores of Lake Tanganyika, and plastic sheeting to provide shelter from the rain.

Kats Vintage Babe

VINTAGE BABE

Cause: Clothing/Textiles build up and wastage=Pollution

In the UK 1million tonnes of textiles are disposed of annually, between 400000 & 700000 tonnes of these are clothes that have been sent to landfill & at least 85% of this could be recycled. Almost all textiles can be respun into new fabric or recycled as new clothing, cleaning cloths or filling materials. My designer toy is here to show all those fashion crazy girls that a brand new outfit every week or so isn’t necessary & buying or swapping second hand clothes can be just as fashionable, cheaper & help save our environment.

Her story: Vintage Babe grew up in London; she never had a lot of money growing up. Vintage babe couldn’t afford all the newest clothes like her classmates, evry1 called her raggedy anne. Vintage babe took up a job delivering papers before school every Thursday, it was a hard job and the pay wasn’t very good but Vintage Babe had one thing in mind. A Sewing machine! She saved all of her money until she was able to buy a sewing machine, as soon as she got the sewing machine home she quickly took it out of the box & started to cut up & redesign all of her old clothes, she discovered a cute little opshop just around the corner from her house & would buy old clothing & materials every time she got payed. Vintage babe would sit at home most nights sewing a new outfit until one day at school a girl came up to her and asked were she was getting all of her beautiful clothes from? She replied “ they’re one of a kind pieces that I buy from the opshop & alter “. The girl asked Vintage babe if she would bring her shopping and show her how she makes old clothes look new and even funkier than all of the mass produced clothing in stores. From that day on Vintage Babe was one of the most popular girls in school, everyday she had someone coming up to her for advice on how to recycle old clothing into new.

One Day Vintage Babe was approached on the streets by a tall thin man in a very fancy suit. “Vintage Babe” he said “yes “she replied in her soft voice, “we’ve been hearing a lot about you & your new approach to recycling, would you be on our new TV show to inspire the rest of your country with your fashion recycling tips and hints?” From that day on Vintage Babe became an icon for fashion but not only that, she has showed hundreds of fashion crazy girls how to have there small part in saving there planet by recycling, reusing & refunking old clothes.

Kyande - Patch - Stitched Solutions

MEET PATCH

Here is Bear,

who is to be held when in despair.

Age doesn't matter to this little fellow,

though he is as comforting as a fluffy pillow.

Schizophrenia is a hard thing to live with,

and must be not hushed as a myth.

Here is Bear,

who you can hold who cares.

He has patches and stitches and a heart of gold,

that will fix problems no matter how old.

Split personalities hurt peoples hearts,

which is why patch shows you a new and happy start.

There is a rainbow on the other end,

and it is you who patch will mend.

Rethink.org is a charity,

that will let you have happy clarity.

So dont be afraid you've got a friend,

so let all of the stitches and patches heal and mend.

http://www.rethink.org/

Designer Toy "Global Warming Mascot" - Posted by Julie Davenport

‘Hope’ and ‘Moi’

Polar Bear Mascots

To Remind us that these amazing mammals are an endangered species!

Recently times have been tough for my character named ‘Hope’.She is a Polar Bear from the Arctic Region where ‘Global Warming’has been melting her ice-land habitat making things difficult. This spring ‘Hope’ gave birth to two cubs a boy named ‘John’ and a girl named ‘Moi’. For several days she had travelled across the icy wilderness to find a suitable place to make her birthing place in the ice. She nurtured both cubs for three weeks but ‘John’ became ill and died one night at a month old. Devastated, ‘Hope’ left, carrying ‘Moi’ for days back across the ice to see her sister ‘Faith’ whose cubs were both now nearly 2 years old and would soon leave her and ‘go it alone’. As ‘Hope and Moi’ arrived in their family’s region they met up with some large male bears hurrying in the opposite direction. She asked them what was wrong and they told her that ‘Poachers’ (Human Beings) had managed to get closer that ever before by ship to their territory and that they had killed at least 6 male bears yesterday. ‘Hope’ slumped down fearing she may know some of them, (later she found out that one of them was ‘Moi’s’ biological father ‘Johnson’) she cried. Tired from carrying ‘Moi’ she sat down on the thin ice to think and catch her breath. She feared for their lives but hoped that the ‘Poachers’ would spare the mothers and cubs, as they only wanted the skins of the bigger bears to keep as a trophy on their lounge-room floors. ‘Moi’ was hungry and tired and ‘Hope’ struggled to get comfortable to give her a feed, but she must do all in her power to make sure ‘Moi’ survives to carry on the species. ‘Moi’ snuggled up all warm and cosy as she fed on mother’s milk, forgetting her worries she fell deeply asleep. Darkness came as ‘Hope & Moi’ finally arrived at ‘Faith’s’ place. All 5 bears rejoiced at seeing each other again and were comforted by the knowledge that they were ‘all’ still alive. ‘Moi’ was doted over by one and all as she had just started to walk and looked so cute. Later on they enjoyed a meal of seal together and lay on the creaking ice and snow watching the stars and auroras lighting up the night sky and talking and dreaming of better days.

Candys - anti-whalling toy

Toy Designer doll




Name: Aquarria
Age : 505
Sex : Female
Job Description: To Fight those who destroy beautiful creatures.

Special Powers: Whirlpool of anilation



Aquarria's Story

Aquarria is a beautiful sea mermaid, who's home is the atlantic and pacific oceans where she patrols and keeps constant watch of her teritory.


This is an extremely important role to her as she protects the large pods of whales that circumnavigate the world.

There is evil upon those waters, as vessels cruise the waters in search of her whales for they have one thing on their minds KILL all in their path. These vessels are armed with huge spears which are launched at any species of whale.They are then dragged up on to the ship where they are slaughtered for their meat and other by products which are used for consumption by an asian race.

Aquarria hunts down these despictable vessels and users her powers to anilate all those on board.

Aquarria swims down to very deepest depths of the ocean and this is where she begins her attack on the ships. She swims as fast as she can in a circle until the spinning vortex of death appears, as it grows bigger and bigger in size a huge funnel on top of the ocean appears, it sucks in the vessel as it goes spiraling to the depths of despair where no can find it.


Help Aquarria to stop these vessels from causing massive exinction to our beloved mammels.






http://www.coolantarctica.com/Antarctica%20fact%20file/wildlife/whales/whale_species.htm

http://images.google.com.au/images?hl=en&um=1&sa=1&q=whaling+ships&aq=f&oq=

MIRANDA: Designer Toy

Leafall

Age: Unknown

Gender: Male

Represented Charity: Daintree Rainforest Alliance

Environmental Issue: The destruction of the Daintree Rainforest. Some causes of this are logging, cash crops, cattle ranching, collonisation schemes, mining and industry, large dams and fuel woods.

Who is Leafall? Leafall fights against the destruction of the Daintree Rainforest. He may be small but he is fighting for a big cause. Leafall needs the help of boys and girls to spread awareness of the issue and protect the rainforest from the loggers and the cold hearted 'fat cats'.
Leafall has the ability to bring kinds into his world, they can speak and understand his language and talk to all the animals/inhabitants of the rainforest.

Hobbies- Living in the Daintree Rainforest, having adventures, climbing tall trees and finding the treasures of the rainforest.
Personality Traits- Fun loving, friendly, caring, strong willed and a leader.

Story: Leafall lives peacefully in the Daintree Rainforest till one day some loggers come and start marking out trees to cut down for some development. Meanwhile two kids, a girl and a boy are walking through the rainforest and also see the loggers. They then spot somthing hiding behind a tree. They chase the creature and capture it, the creature is Leafall.
Leafall and the tow kids sabotage all the loggers attempts to cut down the trees and ruin the rainforest forever. Together they get the awareness of the towns people and stop the developing of more houses and farms which would destroy the beauty of the great Daintree Rainforest and everyone that lives there.

JADE - TOY

Jade Thomas - Toy (locked in)

My character is based on a person with 'locked-in syndrome' which causes the person to have no movement in any of their muscles except their eyes. These people are literally, locked in their own body. Often although the person is pretty much capable of nothing, their intelligence still remains. I made my toy out of heshen sack material, this left my toy looking frayed and beaten. I found this to be highly effective for issue.

I decided to give him a large head because he has lots of thoughts circulating around in his head. His legs and arms and even stomach are small and flat in comparison to his head. I think this also helps us understand his body is not often (never) used/exercised. I made sure he had large eyes are it is the only window into these kinds of people. For his mouth, it's stitching, representing he cannot speak.

Oil.Spill.Penguin

Name- Oilla

Creature/animal- Penguin

Sex- Female

Age- 4

Environmental Issue- Oil Spill Polution

Life Story- Oilla lives in the cold chills of the Antarctic. She was born in an igloo and raised by 2 very brave parents. Her mother and father were in a fatality oil spill. They were covered from head to tail in pure evil oil. They suffocated from the oil and died instantly. Oilla watched the whole thing, she tried her very bravest to rescue them. Luckily for Oilla she only had minor pure evil oil spilt on her so she was safe. She  is still traumatised by the accident and her home was wrecked.  She now needs a loving home and some care taken of for her to survive. She needs to recover and then get back on her two flabby feet and use her special powers!  It was only 2 weeks ago when after her parents had gone to penguin heaven that the emperor penguin(god) sent her a gift a gift of special powers to save any other penguins that were injured from pure evil oil. And to prevent it from happening in the future.

Special Powers- Oilla has a magical black blanket that freezes oil when it hits land/snow. She throws the blanket over the oil mass and with a blink of an eye the oil dissolves into the blanket and magically dissapears leaving no toxins in the blanket. She can then clean the other penguins with the blanket so they are safe and clean from pure evillness. 

All the money used to buy Oilla will go towards the animal welfare program. Helping animals recover from oil/pollution spills. She needs a loving home to take care of her so then she canb go out and fight pure evil forever! Also with Oilla comes a petition letter about oil spills and such. By signing this letter you would have helped many animals.

Oriel - African Refugee Doll

There are literally millions of refugees across Africa, many of whom are women and children, as the men are away fighting or killed in an effort to protect their villages.

Tribal disputes for power and land force whole villages away, with violence and killing the greatest threat.  Sexual violence against women is especially a concern were it is reported:

“Mass rape, often perpetrated by members of the Sudanese armed forces and affiliated militias, is endemic in the Darfur region of Sudan. Government officials deny that rape is an integral part of violence in Darfur and assert that Sudan aggressively punishes rape. In fact, rape victims suffer from an almost complete lack of access to justice, and the Government is more likely to take action against those who report and document rape than those who commit it.”            http://www.refugeesinternational.org

www.unhcr.org/africa

Some of the countries with great numbers of refugees are Uganda, Somalia, Kenya, Tanzania, Eritrea, Sudan and Congo.

Ethiopia, the oldest independent country in Africa, remains committed to offering asylum to refugees arriving on its territory from neighboring countries. Over the past decade, Ethiopia has hosted about 1 million refugees. Fortunately, over time most of them have been able to repatriate to their respective countries. At the present, Ethiopia is home to approximately 80,000 refugees, mostly from Eritrea, Somalia, Sudan, and Kenya. More than a quarter of the refugees, or about 23,500 individuals, are from Eritrea. Over 1,700 Eritrean refugees were registered in the first quarter of 2008.

An estimated 2 million of the more than 4 million people displaced by the north-south conflict have returned home. However, the scale of need in south Sudan is immense, and communities are very vulnerable to a new humanitarian crisis and outbreaks of further conflict if gaps in basic services go unaddressed.

Women Show Their Determination to Rebuild: These women were showing us bricks they made by hand, in an attempt to construct a center to receive new returnees.  There are many women’s groups showing great initiative and willing to support returnees, but they rarely receive the support they need.

 

My concept for the doll is a family, mother with children hanging off her and clinging to her, arrive at the refugee camp, where they may have to wait to be registered and assigned an area.  In the case of the UN refugee camps, they may also be given some basic supplies.

Having walked great distances, their feet are accentuated.

Their eyes are wide, holding the mystery of what they have seen, and heard and felt in their success in escaping and traveling to relative safety.  Some may give birth here, some may die here.

LuLu : Meet Tick-Tock Jones

Ambassador for The Earth Against Global Warming Foundation.

Tick-Tock Jones was born in London, England. After completing High School in London, he went on to study World History at University. Jones travelled the world after his years of schooling and found himself passionately involved in campaigns much alike Green Peace. He has rallied for environmental causes all over the globe. When he first heard about Global Warming, he was shocked to realise that his beloved city, London, was where the Industrial Revolution first began to pollute the Earth.

Since then he has been traveling all over to teach people about the many ways they can help reduce their impact on the world's resources to help minimise Global Warming. 

Tick-Tock Jones has dedicated his life to saving Earth. He has undergone surgery to install a timer in his chest as a reminder that time is running out and that we must make changes to our lifestyles now.

Tick-Tock Jones may not have any super powers but he sure is a super wonderful human being, 

and he will do all he can to make people see just how great our earth is and why we must cherish it.

Tick-Tock Jones is more of a designer figurine than a doll. He is a collectors item of our current times that is meant to remind the people that the power is in our hands. I decided to use a human form for my character because i think that humans seem to identity and act upon an issue faster and with more force if the issue directly affects humans and their own lives.

drop bear against nuclear 

this drop bear toy is against nuclear power and cutting down its habitat that it lives in. for nuclear power  and weapons this toy will be equipped with a shield that is very powerful and has great defense  he hates rich power plant owners and the government. its wrong to destroy the world and its habitat for money and power so the drop bear club fights back.  

ANTI-RACISM / PREJUDICE RAINBOW: Christopher

CAUSE - Racism and prejudice of all type is one of most serious underlying social problems today. Although it becoming more a thing of the past, it still exists and causes a lot of pain for some individuals and should not be tolerated. Prejudice is bred from a young age from in the media and some sad cases of family values.

The hope in this toy is to aim at the younger age mainly yet including older ages to abolish as much chance of prejudice before it becomes a set mind frame.

NAME - Skylar Thompson

The name Skylar Thompson because Skylar is a unisex name which reminds me of rainbows and clouds etc etc. and Thompson cause it sounds friendly like Thompson and Thompson out of Tin Tin.

STORY - Skylar is an alien who came to this planet looking for a new home. Although he only appears on occasions he witnesses and feels the pain of the people on earth. When he arrive he didn't understand or see prejudice, but his curious mind got the best of him and as a highly intellectual being he came to the sudden realization that the little time that the "humans" have left, they spend it hating, hating for no plausible reason. So Skylar became a strong promoter of anti-prejudice.

He has a magic power to wipe out the human race easily if they dont change their ways.

MAKE - Out of soft materials, almost like a pillow for kids to love and hug during the night.

Skylar's Thoughts!

I don't feel that prejudice,
Can't see divided lines.
To me we are all just the same,
Our difference in our souls and minds.
You tell me that the difference,
Is red, brown, black and white.
A world of such variety,
To you becomes an excuse for hate.
We've gotta learn, have hope, unite
And care enough to end this fight.
You're hating with no real insight,
And burning crosses in the night.
A hundred years of barriers,
Yet still we can't see fit
To bring about world unity
And learn to live with it.
Now I'm not just complaining
And I won't preach to anyone,
But we should think about it
'Cos this war has not just begun.




yeah.

Susie Beame -Designer Toy

Cause: Anti smoking

Tens of billions of marketing dollars are spent on tobacco advertising worldwide annually, most of which is aimed directly at recruiting new smokers. The most highly valued recruit is the young consumer. In fact, the younger the better, because cigarette companies know that kids are easier to lure in and hook on tobacco, and young people have decades of smoking years ahead of them. Our children are the life blood of the tobacco industry. Without them, their consumer base would dry up as tobacco products kill off long-time users.

Worldwide, most people start smoking before the age of 18, with nearly one quarter of them trying cigarettes for first time before the age of 10.  Also, the younger a child is when he or she starts smoking, the stronger the odds are for long-term addiction.  And smokers who start very young seem to be less likely to quit.

Introducing "Buster"

"Buster" the healthy heart & healthy lungs monster, has devoted his life to educating kids & teens about the horrible effects of smoking and "busting" underage smoking.

"Say NO to smoking or I'll kick your butts!" he shouts as bounces around and punches the air.

Buster's Story

Buster's Mum was a heavy smoker, but a kind & caring mother.  He adored her.  She developed lung cancer and heart disease when Buster was only 8 years old and she died a slow painful death less than 4 years later.  He missed her terribly and at that time of his life he saw many people smoking and even friends taking up smoking in their teens and he thought they were real losers.

Through Buster's loss came incredible inner strength and determination to promote anti-smoking, fitness, exercise and healthy eating.  "It's not rocket science," he says, "Don't smoke, be happy, live long and strong!"

Although Buster appears to be a bit of a beafcake (pumped up attitude and body), he is incredibly compassionate and streetwise and found people are drawn to his magnetic personality and charm.  He actually possesses a magical power to persuade and influence people.

The most important thing parents can do is quit smoking themselves, he says: "Actions speak louder than words."  Model healthy behaviour and become strongly engaged in your children's lives.

All sales from each "Buster" toy will be directed and donated to Quit Smoking campaign and focussing on educating our young.

http://quitsmoking.about.com/od/antismokingresources/a/WNTD2008.htm
http://www.webmd.com/smoking-cessation/news/20061031/study-teen-antismoking-ads-backfiring