Our Aim
One Earth Toys wants to give opportunities to children to play with toys made from renewable materials that can develop their senses, imagination, and consciousness. We want to provide them with experiences that can develop them as holistic human beings, prioritize protecting nature, appreciate their culture, and support the local economy.
- Manufacturing a range of high-quality handmade , open-ended and child-friendly toys made from natural materials.
- Providing opportunities to children to develop their practical and artistic skills along with their academic abilities through woodwork.
The Birth
Our journey started in 2018 when, after a few years of work in the development and the education sector, we looked for opportunities to bring more purposeful and long-lasting social and environmental impact. While exploring the possibilities, we realized that the wooden toys sector is one area that we can explore because we also looked for such toys for our nephews and nieces. They were not available or cannot be customized at a reasonable price in Pakistan.
Since we are open to new suggestions and ideas, one of our partners suggested giving toy-making workshops to children and their families. Therefore, we also started organizing purposeful playdates of children with their parents, siblings, and grandparents. The children ages 3 to 15 come with their family members and sand, fix and paint their wooden toys. The children love walking away with the toys they make and proudly present them to their family and friends.
The Name
Each year we consume natural resources of more than 1.7 planet Earths, and this number is increasing every year. This increasing rate means that if we continued using these resources, the earth would not sustain us. Therefore, rather than migrating to a different planet, we should encourage a pro-environmental change in our consumption choices and behavior, especially related to the upbringing of our children. As there is no place like the lap of our Mother Earth, we named our company “One Earth Toys”.
Why Nature?
Most of the toys available in Pakistan are made from plastic, which is harmful to the environment significantly, marine life. These plastic toys are also coated with paints containing heavy metals, which harm the children’s physical growth and mental development. Additionally, these toys can only be used in a single way, which means that they restrict children from using their imagination and be less creative and innovative. Since nature broadly focuses on strength, openness, and calmness, through One Earth Toys, we wanted to make toys that have similar qualities.
We have started with wood as a primary material because it is durable and can be used innovatively. We also make sure that the wood is sustainably resourced, and then the toys are painted with safe dyes and polished with a natural varnish made by us in our workshop. We try to design open-ended toys so that kids can play with them in multiple ways, e.g., our rainbow can transform into a mountain, a tunnel, a bridge, or a cave for a child. This keeps them engaged in more purposeful and creative play for a longer time.
Children with special needs can also use our open-ended natural and handmade toys to develop their sensory and gross motor skills. As an alternative to noisy electronic toys, our toys encourage children to interact with them and maintain peace in homes and child’s mind. Hence, they encourage children to make sounds and thus support their speech and language development.
Future
