"Izzy Dolls" Give Comfort To Children In War Torn Countries

Oxbow - Leftover yarn and a few hours of knitting time can make a big difference in the life of a child in a worn-torn country.

Gwen Haaland of Oxbow said the Eastern Star is looking for people who are willing to knit tiny Izzy Dolls. The dolls are delivered to the Canadian Forces training base at Dundurn, and personnel there look after getting them to soldiers on peacekeeping missions to distribute to children. Eastern Star members from Saskatchewan and their friends have already made hundreds of dolls for this project. Gwen collects the dolls made by people from this area.

According to information on the internet, the idea behind the Izzy Doll started in the fall of 1993. Corporal Mark (Izzy) Isfeld had been on a United Nations peacekeeping tour from Oct. 1992 to April 1993 with the Canadian Forces in Croatia. While on patrol, Mark had given out candy and a few pairs of knitted socks that his mother, Carol, had made for him to distribute.

Mark took a lot of pictures and one of them was of a little girls doll on a pile of rubble that had once been her home. On his return home, he showed the picture to his mother and she conceived the idea of knitting little dolls that could be easily carried and that Mark could give to the children he met on his travels.

In April 1994, Mark was on another peacekeeping tour in Croatia. He took a box of knitted dolls with him and his mother sent over two more before he was killed in a mine detonation on June 21, 1994. His Troop Warrant Officer told his mother that they had named the dolls Izzy Dolls and that name stuck. His troop asked Carol to keep making the dolls so they could hand them out in Izzys honour.

Carol decided to keep making the dolls and having his peers distribute them on their missions. Several friends and other mothers across the country heard of the project and they joined in. Word got out and Carol put the doll pattern on the web so that anyone could make them and send to Canadas troops deployed around the world (See www.isfeldbc.com/) The Izzy Dolls continue to be made in many forms and they are distributed in many ways. Canadian Military engineers, in particular, continue to distribute Izzy dolls and Mark Isfelds memory and they continue to bring joy and smiles to little faces in war-torn areas of the world.

One very striking spin-off is the dolls that ICROSS (The International Community for the Relief of Starvation and Suffering) supporters make and distribute dolls they called Izzy Comfort Dolls. These are used to pack around donated medicines and supplies that are given to AIDS orphans in Africa. Most of the recipients of these dolls have nothing and many are buried with their dolls.