Children design IKEA range of soft toys to benefit children through Save the Children and Unicef
Howard Lake | 26 October 2015 | News
IKEA has released a new range of soft toys to raise funds for Save the Children and Unicef. Appropriately, the toys have been designed by children.
IKEA’s annual Soft Toys for Education campaign is underway, featuring toys designed by children in an international drawing competition. One of these is a skunk, drawn by eight-year-old Essex schoolgirl Olivia Wildman. Entrants were invited to let their imagination run wild to create fantastic creatures.
Stinky, her fluffy skunk, joins other toys including a tiger, scary dinosaur, blue one-eyed blob and a mysterious creature with very grip-friendly ears.
The 2015 range of IKEA Soft Toys for Education campaign.
This year’s campaign runs from 18 October to 19 December 2015. For every soft toy, children’s book, dressing up clothes and children’s card game sold during that period, IKEA Foundation will donate €1 to support educational programmes run by UNICEF and Save the Children around the world.
There are 80 toys to choose from and prices start at £1.
Blue Blob – designed by children to benefit children.
Carol McSeveney IKEA Children’s sales leader, UK and Ireland said:
“At IKEA, we see children as the most important people in the world. We believe every child has the right to a healthy, secure childhood and access to quality education, no matter where in the world they live. And because we value doing things together, we turn to our irresistible soft toys for help.
“The final creations show that anything is possible with children’s imaginations. We fell in love with Olivia’s drawing when we first saw it, and we’ve stayed true to her illustration, right down to the little legs and quizzical expression that give it a character all of its own.”
The book of the toys
Each year IKEA creates a children’s book based on the soft toy characters. In this year’s book, “The Friends in Fantasy Forest”, the children’s creations are bought to life in Fantasy Forest where anything can happen, and readers are taken on a journey to discover what the characters do when their house is blown away.
This year the campaign aims to raise €700,000 in the UK & Ireland, to add to a total of €77 million since it began in 2003. IKEA reports that the campaign has reached more than 11 million children through 99 projects in 46 different countries.
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About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.