Auldon Limited introduces first Nigerian doll

As part of effort in promoting girl-child education, tourism and national unity, Auldon Limited has unveiled the Unity Girl Doll. A 14 inches tall doll beautifully dressed in local attire which features the three major Nigeria languages – Amaka (Igbo), Ronke (Yoruba), and Aisha (Hausa), with multi-cultural personalities and a story to share.

According to the company, which trades its toys with the brand name Auldon Toys, the Unity Girl Doll project is designed to be more than just a commercial venture as part of sales proceeds will be set aside for a reputable foundation to manage and impact the necessary societal value beneficial to the Nigerian girl-child education.

The doll, which is a wholly Nigerian concept developed to attune children to Nigeria’s rich culture, history and tourist destinations, has unique values such as instilling community development initiative in the minds of young girls so they can contribute to their families, communities, countries, and the world at large. It highlights Nigeria’s rich culture, history, historic landmarks, language distribution, states and common Nigerian language and also acculturates young girls because it possesses the power to educate, influence greatly their minds and substantially help them determine what is valuable in and around them.

Speaking on the doll, Paul Orajiaka the CEO of Auldon Limited stated that this line of multicultural dolls with deep Nigeria root will help change the girl child fascination with white coloured dolls which have no semblance of the beautiful African skin, look or cultural representation. In designing Unity Girl, we carefully took the doll out of the unrealistic physique of some very popular brands and its likes that in reality only teaches the girl how to manipulate an image of herself outside of herself. The Unity Girl ultimately has the power to infiltrate the child consciousness and educate the child about how to act, relate and sustain learned values.

“Our model is based on the idea of harnessing the power of buyers who want to do good with their purchases. We want to portray Unity Girl as far more than a doll. It will have a brand identity,a brand that will represent the social concern of the challenges with the girl child education and their ware-fare in Nigeria and the world at large,” he stated.

Unity Girl as the name implies and its slogan ”Growing bonds of love amongst us” will no doubt arose that spirit of oneness amongst children early in life from interaction with this doll and hence promote the Unity Girl mission which is to: invite all girls to become agents of change, improve lives of friends and families around them, their communities, across the country, and around the world.

On the reason for the particular interest on the child education, Orajiaka said this is due to the fact that Forty per cent of Nigerian children aged 6-11 do not attend any primary school, with the Northern region recording the lowest school attendance rate in the country, particularly for girls’ education where the gender gap remains particularly wide and the proportion of girls to boys in school ranges from 1 girl to 2 boys to 1 to 3 in some states. In total it is estimated that about 4.7 million children of primary school age are still not in school.

Unity Girl Doll project hope to support the child friendly school concept, which UNICEF is advocating for and is not comprehensively adopted by the various states in Nigeria. A majority of primary schools, especially in rural areas, lack water, electricity and toilet facilities.

On why Auldon Limited has decided to embark on this social impacting venture, Orajiaka stated that “we believe as a company we are blessed and while been profitable, we can be a blessing to thousands of Nigerian children through empowerment via this initiative. This initiative though as audacious as it may appear, our passion and drive as a company that is CSR conscious will see it through and deliver on its promises.”