Exhibit features playthings crafted by Third World kids from discarded cigarette cartons, sardine cans, and flip-flops

After grim days spent investigating drought and famine in the Horn of Africa during 2000, John Schultz stumbled upon a sight that immediately lifted his spirits. Kids were splashing gleefully in the waters of Lake Turkana, in northern Kenya; it was a scene of normal life amid the despair and hopelessness. He took the time to admire a small homemade sailboat that nine-year-old Thomas Akimat had fashioned out of a discarded flip-flop, three sticks, and a plastic bag. To his surprise, the boy handed him the toy as a gift.

"It was quite a magnificent gesture," remembered the Christian Children's Fund president, on the line from his office in Richmond, Virginia. "It was clearly precious to him and he'd made it with his own hands. As I walked away with the boat, it also dawned on me what a wonderful symbol it was of the creativity and resilience of young children."

The encounter inspired Schultz to ask kids in the more than 54 developing countries where the charity operates to donate their handcrafted toys for an exhibit. That touring collection, titled I Made It! Toys of the Global Village, is at the Vancouver Museum until August 30. And although the original boat now sits on the credenza in Schultz's office, a dead ringer made in the same Kenyan village will hold pride of place in its own glass case.

In our developed world, the word toy calls up an image of the mass-produced, bubble-packed objects stacked to the ceiling at Toys 'R' Us. By contrast, these simple creations by poor children are marvels of imagination and ingenuity. Soccer balls of wadded plastic bags held together with webbed string are just the right size and density for a kids' match. And a two-and-a-half-foot snake made of strung-together bottle caps and wooden tips, by a Guatemalan girl, is uncannily realistic in its heft and coiling movement.

"The First World has lost that kind of imagination," commented Sandy Blair, the Vancouver Museum's exhibit designer and father of two Game Boy fans, as he gave a preview of the toys. "Those kids just have to use the materials they've got at hand. You can picture them going through the garbage or dumps. Or they've picked up something raw off the street, and they've decided, 'That's going to be a car, or a rattle.' "

Blair had seen a small notice about the CCF's toy-collecting mission in the December 2001 issue of National Geographic and brought the project to the attention of the museum's curators. The local exhibit combines two touring ones that have made the rounds of the United States.

The 208 items display an almost heartbreaking range of materials and sophistication. The simplest ones include a roughly carved dugout canoe, painted giant seed-pod rattles, a tambourine made from the metal lid of a fruit-jelly tin, and cars built of cigarette cartons or a sardine can. At the other end of the spectrum are ingeniously bent and wrapped wire bicycles and a colourful, two-part tanker truck, meticulously assembled from one whole and many cut-up Senegalese insecticide spray cans.

Charity workers in the field collected most of the toys and most of their documentation isn't especially thorough. Luckily, handfuls of snapshots capture some of the original makers with their treasures; these images have been transformed into poignant banners. Blair was kept busy trying to match items to rough lists as he prepared the show. Since some of the origins were unclear, it has struck him that children of such disparate cultures as Indonesia, Guatemala, and Senegal have often come up with similar playthings.

Given the rudimentary components and striking artistry of so many pieces, Schultz believes that the exhibit carries a dual message: one of unmet needs as well as the capacity of kids to express joy and overcome their circumstances. Blair agreed: "When you think of the places they come from and the hardships they face, this shows that kids can be kids, wherever they are."

From corn-husk dolls that look like highly decorated tamales to a Colombia-made foam puppet modelled on Oscar the Grouch, it's also clear that kids take their inspiration from not just folk traditions but also global mass-media icons. Blair hopes that families who check out the exhibit might be moved to start creating at home, an idea encouraged at the museum by a couple of hands-on craft tables. "I'm hopeful that they'll think about how easy it is to make things that are fun to play with for next to nothing," he added. "It doesn't take a lot: a little piece of wood, a nail here, a bit of glue."