洋娃娃挑战种族偏见

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In an age where athletes are sometimes perceived as flashy and arrogant, Green Bay Packers wide receiver James Jones served drumsticks and spaghetti to families, posed for pictures and even tossed the football around with the kids. For him, the spotlight is a way to raise awareness about Americans living in poverty.

Residing in London, Chris and Ada Ngoforo were keen for their children to stay in touch with their Nigerian heritage. With this desire and the difficulty in finding black dolls for their daughters, the entrepreneurial couple takes matters into their hands.

Soon after, the couple launched their own range of toys, called Rooti Dolls, programmed to speak in several native African languages and promote positive self-images.

"Our research made us understand that the reason for this (unable to speak and understand their mother tongues) is not because our children don't want to learn their mother tongues, but more because there are not many essential tools that can easily be both educational and fun at the same time." says Ngoforo.

The couple has launched 12 dolls from different African countries. Each one can speak a combination of languages and has their own story.

Amongst them, there's Nina, a "vibrant girl" with Nigerian parents, who "loves watching Nollywood" and can interact in the Nigerian languages of Igbo, Yoruba, Hausa, and Ibibio.

Ngoforo says the toys, which come in different shades of skin color, are designed to break down stereotypes and to provide a more accurate representation of black people.

"The dolls out there in the market are nothing close to the real image of a black child in terms of features and other attributes -- they are either too thin, too light or chiseled-faced, and even the complexions of most of the dolls are kind of whitewashed," says Ngoforo.

"The unfortunate effect of this stereotypical misrepresentation is a case of low self-esteem among black children who have been directly or indirectly made to believe less in themselves as a black child. They have been made to believe that you have to look like a white doll to be accepted as beautiful or even good."

Similarly to the Ngoforos, Nigerian entrepreneur Taofick Okoya foray into the business was inspired by his family. Some five years ago, he went into an upmarket Lagos store to buy a doll as a birthday present for his young niece, but left disappointed.

"I wanted to buy her something that would be quite encouraging or instrumental in her development," he says. "I realized that they had an array of different dolls but none of them were black and they were rather pricey."

That gave Okoya food for thought and after some initial research, he decided to launch the Queens of Africa black dolls, each one representing different tribes in the continent. Later on, he decided to expand the project by launching a series of fun and educational books, songs and cartoons based on the dolls' characters.

"The dolls will help the Nigerian/African [children] be better people because they would be proud and confident in who they are as a race," says Okoya. "The comics, books and animation stories is the medium we use to enlighten and educate children on our history and culture."

为了让孩子对自己的文化和语言有所了解， 两名企业家决定生产具有非洲人模样的洋娃娃。试图通过这种设计打破人们对非洲人的成见，同时向人们提供更加准确的表述，使他们对自己作为非洲人感到骄傲和自信。