IZZY DOLLS - Canadian Icon of Love and Comfort - Given to Local Refugee Children!

"The Canadian military is recruiting volunteers who have a specific skill set: knitting or crocheting! It wants you to help knit the national gift of peace, the Izzy Doll. For the past two decades, Canadian soldiers and health care workers have given out more than 1.3 million of the tiny dolls to children in worn-torn countries and regions affected by natural disaster. Recently, the RCMP took 800 Izzy Dolls with them to Haiti.    

- excerpts from story by Paula McCooey - Ottawa Citizen, 11/18/15

   Shirley O’Connell, Canadian coordinator of the Izzy Doll project says the dolls help to put a smile on children’s faces during difficult times. She’s appealing to the public to help get the these dolls into the hands of the thousands of refugee children who resettle in Canada.  They can be knitted or crocheted.  www.izzydoll.ca   

“I’m hoping that the attention will cause a lot more knitters to be aware that these innocent children are coming into our country and they’ve been sort of bumped around from place to place, and these little dolls will bring them comfort,” said O’Connell, an RCMP widow and grandmother of nine who works with the help of church groups and The International Community for the Relief of Suffering and Starvation (ICROSS Canada). 

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. 

Isfeld was killed in Croatia in 1994 while removing landmines, and his mother has since died. But the legacy of the Izzy dolls lives on.

While in Kabul, Afghanistan, combat engineer Cpl. James Oakley was used to handling dangerous tasks, but a few days before Christmas, his team’s mission was to go into a local village and give out Izzy dolls to children.

“At first the children were nervous about approaching us as we came into their village, but once they saw the dolls poking out from the top of the boxes we were carrying, we were all but mobbed by excited young Afghans holding out their little hands, calling out, ‘Mister, mister!’,” Oakley wrote in a testimonial. “Before I realized it, the box was empty and there were dozens of happy little faces milling around, enjoying their new treasures.”

The dolls — made either as boys with the peacekeepers’ UN blue berets or girl dolls with braids and a floppy hat — are to be about six inches tall and kept light so they are easy for soldiers to carry in their pockets. There is a design on the website http://www.izzydoll.ca/dolll/dolll.html  that knitters can follow, but volunteers are free to make their own version, too. Typically they are made out of scrap or donated wool and take about three hours to make.

As someone who has knitted several dolls herself, O’Connell says the process can bring on an “overwhelming” sense of emotion, knowing the gesture will cause a ripple effect.

“It’s about the person knitting the doll because to me it speaks for Canadian women. It says we care about the children of the world, we care about the soldiers and health care workers, when they get the dolls there’s always smiles on their faces — and when you are knitting the dolls knowing that all that love is coming from Canada to the children of the world.”  Youth are also interested.  Through the program 'Encounters with Canada', sponsored by Veterans Affairs Canada, selected students participate in a program where they discover their country through many experiences - including an Izzy Doll workshop (where they learn the story/history and finish making a doll to be donated to a child in some troubled spot in the world). 

The distributing agencies have increased, and children around the world have also received Izzy Dolls from the Toronto International Police Officers in Afghanistan, ICROSS Canada, Canadian doctors on short term medical missions, and various Canadian charities, which continue Mark’s legacy.

The Izzy Dolls continue to bring comfort and smiles to the faces of the children around the world, in Mark's memory.

If you are interested in being part of this effort to provide a small gift of comfort, welcome!   

Instructions to make the dolls can be found online at www.izzydoll.ca/dolll/dolllforknitters - for knitters.

Instructions for crocheters can be found at  http://www.hpicanada.ca/izzy-dolls/pattern-for-crocheters/ 

For more information about patterns and information on distributing the dolls, contact O’Connell at  

 Regina Drop-Off point:

Thee Lingerie Shoppe
4037 Albert St, Regina SK S4S 3R6 
306-359-3373

Locally, Regina Open Door Society (RODS) staff are distributing the Izzy Dolls to refugee children arriving from many countries. RODS is the local Settlement Organization serving Government-Assisted Refugees (GAR's).

RODS World Refugee Day Event is June 20th at 12 noon in Regina City Square Plaza stage. Izzy Dolls will be at the RRLIP table. 

Izzy dolls will also be given to private sponsors to share with the sponsored children.

If you a part of a group sponsoring refugees, please contact the RRLIP (Regina Region Local Immigration Partnership) office at 306-791-6841 or   for further information on receiving Izzy Dolls for the sponsored children.