12/13/2025
This past October, we sat around a table with Yazidi youth we’ve known for nearly a decade. Displacement shaped their early teenage years. Now, they are rebuilding their lives in the long aftermath of genocide.
We invited them to help create the peg villagers for our year-end It Takes a Village campaign. Each villager was painted by hand, one brushstroke at a time. What looked simple on the surface quickly revealed how much effort it would take. Years of disrupted schooling made fine motor skills hard to develop. Hands cramped. Lines wobbled. Still, the boys stayed with it.
Then we hit a problem. The peg villagers didn’t fit into the wooden trays.
After searching markets and bazaars for the right drill bit and coming up empty, the boys returned to the table and began sanding each hole by hand. Again and again. Some more than a hundred passes per hole. Slow, repetitive work until each villager finally fit.
No two holes are exactly the same. Nothing about this set is mass-produced. You can see where paint built up, where sanding took longer, where a hand hesitated and tried again.
Each piece carries the touch of the boys who made it.
Each villager represents a kind of care that helps people rebuild their lives, and the many people who have walked with these boys over the years: Healer. Builder. Guide. Provider. Dreamer. Welcomer.
Rebuilding happens through care, effort, and many hands showing up over time. It takes a village.
These sets carry a small piece of that story and an invitation to be part of the village still at work. 💪
