Happy Birthday, Little World: Our Ethical Baby Collection Turns One

Babies grow a lot before their first birthday. Turns out our ethical baby collection did too!

Last October, we introduced Little World, our collection of fair trade baby gifts. We started with a set of baby bibs and a baby blanket hand-stitched from recycled sari fabric by our artisan partners working with Prokritee in Bangladesh.

The goal was to help you find a sweet ethical gift to take to your next baby shower. A fair trade gift that would generate income and create bright futures for moms and babies in villages across Bangladesh. Because you loved these gifts so much, we were able to create more designs for babies and Little World grew.

Over the last year, we welcomed stuffed animals, finger puppets, booties, and a Moses basket into the Little World family. The kantha stitched stuffed giraffe, dog, and cat are also made from recycled sari fabric. We incorporate eco-friendly techniques and materials into the Little World collection because we believe kids deserve to inherit a healthy planet from us. That’s why we love that ACP in Nepal uses AZO-free dyes to color the felt used to make their adorable finger puppets. Little World now includes hand-felted finger puppets in the shape of a bumblebee, dragonfly, sunflower, fox, owl, and hedgehog.

You’ll also find a sweet pair of booties, made just for little feet, handcrafted from traditional Guatemalan fabric by artisans working with our fair trade partner UPAVIM Crafts.

Just in time for the winter season, we’ve added three new pairs of cozy fleece booties to the collection, handcrafted by UPAVIM. (Pink Smiling Kitty Booties available in store only!)

Three kantha stitched elephants from India recently joined the collection too, along with terry cloth wash mittens from Guatemala and three hand-crocheted baby animals from Vietnam to add to your kid-friendly Christmas tree.

As the Little World collection has grown, so has the impact. The majority of the artisans who craft the ethical baby gifts in the Little World collection are women, many of whom are able to work from home while caring for babies (or toddlers and teens) of their own.

We choose to work with women artisans because they are often excluded from the global economy. Our long-standing relationships show us when women gain financial independence, their daughters, families and communities flourish, breaking the cycle of poverty.

When you choose to pay a fair price for ethical baby gifts from the Little World collection, you make this change possible.

Follow us on Facebook and Instagram to see how many growth spurts the Little World collection will have in the coming year!