The Toy Company That Teaches Natural Hair Care to Girls of Colour
We always go nutty with excitement when we hear about new projects to increase diversity in children's toys. Here is one such project that we are loving right now. Meet Healthy Roots, a toy company that is teaching natural hair care to girls of colour and celebrating diversity.
Founder Yelitsa Jean-Charles, a children's illustrator, started the company to tackle mainstream beauty standards that can have a negative effect on girls of colour, causing them to suffer from internalized racism and self esteem issues.
She reached out to us to tell us a bit more about the project and why she started it.
"Growing up, I suffered from many insecurities about my skin colour and texture," she said. " I was often told in order to be beautiful you had to have long, flowing hair or fair skin."
Healthy Roots is a doll + book series starring best friends Zoe, Dara, Gaiana, and Marnda. These girls are not only fashionable but they have a passion for learning and helping others. Yelitsa Jean-Charles is hoping that this mix of edutainment will help to promote self love and diversity in children's products.
Healthy Roots are currently fundraising on Kickstarter. You can also check them out on Facebook.
Brazil has the biggest black African diaspora outside of Africa. Now, when it comes to children’s media there is very little reflection of this fact. As we are based in Nigeria we didn’t really have any idea just how bad the situation was. That is until we were approached by several English speaking Brazilian fans of Bino & Fino asking if there was a Portuguese version of the show.
2015 was a really awesome year. We discovered some really great things that are helping to nurture young minds. After a lot of thinking we've compiled our favorite 5 posts of 2015.
Cultural dances play a huge role in African societies. These dance forms are used to teach moral values, social etiquette and to help people mature and celebrate members of the community while celebrating festivals and other occasions.
Here is a neat list of stores that do African themed greeting cards for you to check out.