It all starts with a thread. A thread that sprouts in the villages of Aracena (Huelva) and to which others are added, until it forms a chain capable of bringing together different realities and weaving networks that support life. It is from these threads that Terezinhas are made, dolls that “give life to other children” in Malanje, one of the provinces most affected by child malnutrition in Angola.
The hands that weave this project are those of La Urdimbre, an association created to make visible the support networks created by the women of the Sierra de Aracena and the Picos de Aroche in the face of the abandonment suffered by rural areas. From this same place – that of sisterhood, community and the invisible – arises the Terezinhas project, an initiative that seeks to raise funds to finance the care program against child malnutrition of the NGO Mundo Orenda.
“From here, with our channel, we can do things that, unfortunately, other women cannot do in their country due to the socio-economic context in which they live, which is why we decided to expand this associative fabric from one continent to another, throwing threads to other communities,” explain Alba Soriano and Carmen López, founders of the association that created these crochet dolls and, with them, a network of solidarity that has grown beyond rural Andalusia.
A coincidence that became a cause
The idea was born almost by “chance”. Alba and Carmen bought a doll for a gift and asked one of the village women to sew her a crochet outfit. “When we saw it finished, dressed in beautiful clothes, we knew we had to do something with it,” recalls Alba, who was then preparing to participate in the volunteer program organized by Mundo Orenda during the summer.
This volunteer intended to raise funds for some projects of the Sevillian NGOD and Rebeca Herrera, the director of the organization, told her about the program against malnutrition: “A humanitarian assistance project, of life and death, which requires a lot of resources”. It was at that moment that the girls of La Urdimbre decided that “if we sold the doll, with the total amount of the sale we could support the Mundo Orenda project against child malnutrition”.
This is how the first Terezinha was born, named after one of the first girls who were part of the program that the Sevillian organization developed at the Quessua Medical Center, in Malanje. Her smile even in the most difficult times, her strength and her desire to live despite difficult conditions pushed the girls of La Urdimbre to create this completely altruistic project. From there, they challenged themselves to sell 100 dolls before Alba went into the field and personally collected the profits raised, converted into food and medicine.
“For us, it’s a doll, but for them, it’s a full month of treatment for malnutrition,” explain the founders of La Urdimbre. Each piece has a symbolic price of 25 euros, which is equivalent to a package consisting of eggs, flour, sugar, oil, soap and some medicines for children suffering from severe malnutrition. The Terezinhas have thus become “a symbol of help, humanity, empathy” and also a means “of uniting two worlds and uniting consciences”, expanding this same fabric of support that is deployed among the women of the villages of Aracena.
A thread held by many hands
The first doll was followed by a hundred others. They launched the challenge in May, and when Alba left for Angola in early July, they had delivered 103 dolls and had another 100 on the waiting list. “We had to stop because we couldn’t keep up: we had raw materials, but there were no hands to weave, and you can’t buy it, it’s something voluntary,” explains Carmen d’Aracena.
When Alba returned from Angola, she found that more women from other cities had joined her, willing to weave. “We wanted them to be crocheted or knitted as a symbol of the bond that unites women in rural areas and also to highlight the efforts of all, materialized in a doll that becomes food for the children who need it,” summarizes Alba, impatient to “see what all this work translates into.”
Over the months, this collective network has expanded across the provinces of Huelva and Seville. Every Friday, around twenty of them, of all ages, meet in Aracena to sew, dress dolls or wrap them. A weekly meeting in which the thread circulates from hand to hand and makes the project grow.
The other end of this thread is held by Dr. Cleyvy, head of the Comprehensive Malnutrition Care Project at Quessua Medical Center. From there, discover for yourself the impact of this continent-spanning distortion. “Our work aims to bring together people who want to help and those who really need to be helped and, in the middle, we try to connect threads, ideas and bring together very different realities, but with love and humanity as a common denominator,” explains the doctor.
For Cleyvy, support goes beyond medical treatment. “Take these mothers by the hand, look them in the eyes and say: We are together, because they too need us, this chain that we have begun to weave and which today not only gives life to their children, but also gives them encouragement and strength to continue. » A seed sown in rural areas which found fertile land on the other side of the world. “Angola needs this channel,” concludes the doctor at the Quessua Medical Center.
An invisible work that nourishes
Since the launch of the initiative, more than 700 dolls have been sold. And the La Urdimbre project continues today at full capacity: every Friday, women and girls come together to prepare the orders that continue to arrive from all over Spain, and even beyond its borders. From the heart of rural Andalusia, each Terezinha is prepared with care and dedication, knowing that it is much more than a gift that someone will look forward to receiving at home.
Each doll symbolically represents all those boys and girls who, like Terezinha, fight every day against malnutrition in one of the provinces of Angola hardest hit by poverty, food insecurity and lack of access to basic services. Each doll sold “is an example of the power of solidarity to transform lives and of the opportunities that these little ones will have, thanks to the support of so many people, to continue growing”, they emphasize from Mundo Orenda, grateful for the initiative promoted by La Urdimbre.
Furthermore, the Terezinhas are proof that the ancestral knowledge of rural women can be converted into direct humanitarian aid for people in extremely vulnerable situations. A project that transforms the invisible work of women – that which is learned at home and passed down from generation to generation – into an urgent response to childhood malnutrition.
La Urdimbre is convinced that here and there, in very different contexts, but crossed by the same inequalities, it is the women who sustain life: those who weave in the Sierra de Aracena and the Picos de Aroche and those who care for and resist in Malanje. United by a thread that crosses kilometers, cultures and realities, with the same goal. The Terezinhas are ultimately much more than a doll: “they are a symbol of life, hope and the future”.
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