Every young girl wants to feel like she’s accepted by her classmates and fits into her community, no matter what her race, religion, nationality or challenges.
Nobody understands this better than Zoe Terry, a Black entrepreneur who started Zoe’s Dolls, a nonprofit organization in Miami when she was just 5 years old as a way to stop the bullying that she — and others — endured growing up.
“I was bullied because of the stroke I suffered at age 2, which affected my motor skills,” Terry explains. “I talked differently and had a lisp. I also couldn’t ride a tricycle like the other kids. They would call me ‘slowpoke.’” And, at the age of 5, she was bullied because of the color of her skin and texture of her hair at her school, mostly attended by white students.
“For the longest time, I was one of the only Black girls,” she expresses. “It was important to find ways to, not only empower myself, but other Black girls (and boys) going through the same thing — and to see their image in Black dolls and know that they’re beautiful.”
Terry asked those at her school and at the barbershop where her mother, Nakia Bowling, was a customer, to donate Black dolls. In the first year, she only received 150; to date, though, she has collected and given out more than 50,000 dolls (in the U.S., Haiti, Zambia, Cuba, The Netherlands, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, India and London).
Fast forward to today. Terry, now 16, and in the 11th grade, has added six Empowered Programs.
“There’s the Living Doll Experience, Girlpreneur Program, Loving the Skin I’m In Creative Expressions Contest, Love Letters to Black Girls, Girl Ambassador Program and the Girl Fit Experience,” she points out. Terry also wrote a children’s book titled “Simply Zoe,” available in several schools and on Amazon, and is writing another.
She still attends the same school where she was bullied but says that it is much more progressive and diverse — and has changed for the positive.
And, ironically, after the head of her school addressed the bullying issue with Terry and her bullies (mainly one girl), the girls are now actually friends.
Terry looks forward to attending college, where she “wants to major in political science and go to law school” and to continuing her important work with Zoe’s Dolls.
For more information about Zoe’s Dolls, call 305-726-3673 or 305-710-7159 or visit zoesdolls.com.