Izzy Dolls

I am Canadian, and the Canadian military currently has goal to provide children, many of them Syrian refuges, with hand-knit toys called Izzy dolls.

The dolls, which cannot be bought or sold for profit, were inspired by and named after Master Cpl. Mark Isfeld of No. 1 Combat Engineer Regiment who was serving on peacekeeping missions in Kuwait and Croatia in the early 1990s. There, he often came across children with no toys or personal possessions, so his mother, Carol Isfeld, knitted little woollen dolls that he could give away to the kids he met.

There's an article on them from the Ottawa Citizen here and if you'd like more information Shirley O'Connor, the organizer for Ottawa, can be contacted at soconn37@gmail.com or (613) 267-3145.