Our Journey
We love being parents and there is nothing more important than raising our children. This can be equally rewarding and sometimes very challenging!
4 years ago, our daughter Ariel who was 3 at the time, came back home from childcare one day with a question that would mark the beginning of our journey. She asked my husband and I whether she and I were brown because we had been eating too much chocolate (origin of ‘choklit’). She was coming to a realisation that her skin colour was different, brought to light by a classmate that made her feel self-conscious. We knew at that moment that we needed to educate her in what it meant to be culturally diverse.
But when would be the right time to start teaching her about a world that’s already so divided by race and colour? And what would be the best way that is sincere and sensitive? The perfect tool, we thought, to assist us in developing an awareness, would be to familiarise her with something she was passionate about. That special something could play an important role in her development as a global citizen.
Flashbacks of my childhood, life in Botswana, southern Africa, became uncomfortably heavy upon recollection. Toy stores in my country did not seem to stock brown skin dolls. There weren’t any dolls I could identify with, nor that I could see myself through.
Going back four years, we were purchasing dolls not realising that our daughter’s collection didn’t contain a single item she could uniquely identify with. Dolls that exemplified diversity, empowerment, promoted self-love or nurtured confidence; dolls that could be a representation of what she embodied.
Rosi Quaremba
Co-Founder & Director
Dolls are usually a child's first best friend, and they act as a very important tool for social development, role playing and the foundation for building acceptance and intercultural friendships and relationships.
So that night, Ariel’s innocent little question, led us to a brown skin doll pursuit both online and in-store. After searching a multitude of stores, incredibly, only a handful of brown skin dolls were readily available in the market.
My husband and I decided that instead of excusing companies that weren’t manufacturing brown skin dolls, we would embark on our own journey, to start a collection that could help children of colour rethink how they perceived themselves and to help other children to build cultural acceptance from a young age.
We have created 3 gorgeous dolls, each uniquely different in shades of brown, coupled with hair that is afro, kinky straight, and coily-spirals. Our dolls represent an array of cultures, nationalities, world regions and have ethically correct features. They are of the highest quality including the hair and clothes. Our hair and skin colour selection are rare and very much needed in the toy industry. Our journey begins here, and we hope that you will be a part of it, as we continue to bring Choklit dolls to you.