Today is International Day of the Girl, and I'm delighted that we have collaborated with Lingua Franca and Rose and Rex on special dolls to celebrate the day. The collection includes our five human girl dolls (Ada, Celia, Fern, Louise, and Nell) wearing tiny Lingua Franca sweaters and stylish linen pants. They're very special, and Rose and Rex is donating all proceeds to WomenOne, an organization that helps educate girls worldwide.

Also today, if you order any of our human dolls on our site (girls or boys!) we'll donate 10% of your order total to WomenOne.

Ever since I found out about this most excellent of holidays, I’ve been thinking about one of my favorite topics: girls or groups of girls (or grown-up people, or fictional woodland animals of all genders) doing industrious projects together. Sometimes I feel like I’ve surrounded myself with real-life, grown-up versions of the sorts of ambitious projects I used to do as a kid: putting on plays, staging Barbie proms, making quilts, making a little hut in the woods. 

Some of my favorite examples of late:

Recently, we found out at the office that we would have to make hundreds of wool pompoms ourselves. Basically everyone volunteered because that would “spark joy.” It was a very “Hazel Village animals” moment.

And yesterday, we got an email from Helena, age 8: 

I really like you guys and so I made a boat and a fishing hook for Gracie Cat since she likes fishing. And I made a pillow and a cushion so it's like a boat-bed. Her sail is made out of tissue paper and wooden rod. The boat is made out of the box she came in and I want to add a sea around the boat-bed. The cushion and the pillow I made with my sowing machine. The fishing hook I made out of a rope-ish string, and another wooden rod. For the fish I used paper. Here are some pictures that I took:

I see echoes of this can-do attitude in the women-led businesses we collaborate with, like Lingua Franca, and in the women-led teams of artisans around the world who make Hazel Village products. And of course, the Hazel Village animals, although co-ed and 100% fictional, live this can-do attitude every day. 

In these examples, I see less worrying about ego and more worrying about getting along with others and helping out to get a desired project done - things that as girls and women in the US, we are socialized to care about. These virtues are often mentioned as negatives in our (worthwhile!) hurry to close the gender pay gap, encourage girls and women to speak up for ourselves, apologize less, etc. But I just want to put in a good word for us the way we are. 

This is just stuff that I have been thinking about. I hope it doesn't sound too regressive, and probably not everyone in the company would agree with me, all claims of "group cohesion" aside. I guess I'm saying that girls are the inspiration for everything that we do here, and it's an honor to work in a women-led industry. Thank you, reader, for shopping with us and making all this possible!